Wall with apartment

Housing reform for a couple of audiovisual producers and their galga

Dreams of lights projected onto the canvas of an old structural factory

A couple decides to move to an old house located on the third floor of a block built during the 1950s in a famous working-class neighborhood in the city of Granada. With a very poor factory enclosure, these blocks are defined by a sparse structure of two bays of load-bearing walls of 1 foot of large-format ceramic hollow brick. The interior was similarly limited, with a tight height of 2.20 that sheltered a small but fragmented domestic space (60m2) organized around a central longitudinal wall. The number of rooms, absolutely disproportionate to the total space available, tried to fit the existing family model at the time by accommodating all the needs of a family of many members in a small apartment if we adhere to today's standards.

The couple, without children, but with a very beloved pet, raised some needs far removed from those that determined the origin of the program and, therefore, the organization of the house, also conflicting with the rigid pre-existing supporting structure. The demand was clear: open spaces and as generous as possible, a privileged place to cook and, above all, the desire to turn the house into an exciting transparent framework for an active social life as well as on screen for experimentation with media. audiovisuals, the creative center of your work activity.

The first decision would be to reduce the number of original enclosures to a minimum, just two parallel ships around the central load-bearing wall. This element would be emptied from tight cuts that widened the existing gaps in the original house, minimizing, due to its geometry, the impact on the building's general supporting structure. Three openings, two for the bedroom and one for the living room, connected and disconnected the night parts of the daytime in the transverse direction, making the wall the center of the house. As if it were a patrimonial element, the intervention brings to light the constructive nature of it revealing the brick factory with which it was made. Double steel profiles joined together supported this element, leaving a joint inside to house a reprogrammable LED lighting system in real time.The result, a bearing element understood as a virtual instrument capable of summoning the dreams of a couple in a material fragment, during the heavy day and at night light. An instrument that is capable of appearing or disappearing to make way for intimate moments illuminated by the memory of an ancient passage or room

Other hidden treasures would also come to light as a latticework of the original project hidden in later works and that will be recovered and integrated into the new and spectacular window with which the house will manage the southern light and the views of Sierra Nevada.

The rest would be simple, a single material with which to accompany the wall, pine wood on the floor and partitions understood as infrastructure-furniture with which to solve the needs of storage and work, also promoting the unit reading of each bay of the house. The use of mirrors in toilets and hallways would spatially expand the boundaries of the apartment both indoors and out.