TWO FAMILIES HOUSE
The assignment consists of the division of a single-family house from the mid-20th century, located in La Floresta neighborhood, in Sant Cugat del Vallés, to accommodate two families. The building is surrounded by a garden with different terraces that help overcome the steep slope of the land, with the main access at the highest level and a second access at the lower level.
The house, with four floors, one of them in the basement, and built with load-bearing walls, was organized based on the juxtaposition without hierarchy of rooms of different sizes, some of which were of a certain elegance, spacious, symmetrical and with large openings. The project, based on the original matrix, superimposes a new hierarchy, ordering itself from a sequence of large rooms connected to each other.
The technical and programmatic specificities of each new use accumulate like a poché on the perimeters of each space, camouflaging the interventions through the appropriation of some existing geometries and calligraphy, defining the shape of the void. The application of the same color on all planes reinforces the value of the space compared to the elements that compose it, mixing the new and the old with a certain ambiguity.
One of the homes is located on the ground floor, linking its public spaces to the garden. Accessed through an external staircase, the second is organized into the two upper floors. The semi-basement floor, separated from the rest and open to the garden, completes the program of the houses with technical rooms and a set of community spaces.
The project integrates the necessary energy improvement actions in the envelope of the spaces. Thermal floors and an inertia floor are installed, and insulating material is injected into the chambers of the walls and ceilings, maintaining the dimensions and skin of the original space.