A Doorless House
Casa Antillón, an Architecture and Design studio based in Madrid, presents its first domestic renovation: A house without doors.
The attic of this house was filled with toys, furniture, and dust. It was a completely open space, approximately 70 square meters, that was barely used. Therefore, the clients commissioned us to convert this attic into a house for their children and guests. A small house that would have a living room, a bedroom, a fireplace, plenty of storage, and a bathroom.
Analyzing this place, we soon understood that this house had to break with the usual hierarchies found in the rest of its floors. The project should not replicate the old formula of big boxes and small boxes, where each function is completely isolated by walls, which only open through doors. A typology that forces each room to have a specific function without any opportunity to interact.
We had to break the walls of the house: cut them, deform them, destroy them. And recover the ancient idea of placing a fire at the central point, around which the different spaces are articulated. Spaces that can change their function over time, as we have not named them, but that do ensure a certain level of privacy. To achieve this, we created a broken curved wall that divides the spaces into public and private.
The positioning of the wall is strategic as it leaves the skylights on one side, where the light enters intensely, allowing all this light to be contained on one side of the wall. And by opening gaps in such a way that we create, in an interior without windows, the sensation of being able to look outside. Additionally, two passages open on each side of the wall, giving access to the two smaller rooms and also allowing it to be bypassed.
We apply a similar approach in the bathroom, which we break down into a shower, toilet, and sink. Three independent spaces situated in a row, occupying less floor space and allowing for a different dialogue with the apartment. We imagine a person waking up, walking barefoot on the carpet of the house, and entering directly into the shower without even needing to open or close doors.
Between the bathroom and the wall, the two most important elements within the project, a corridor is created where the space is tensioned. A sort of secret passage that leads from one room to another and provides access to the bathroom. Creating a series of relationships that do not usually exist in the domestic sphere and encourage walking through the house. A walk that is not predetermined since it is the user themselves, each day, who decides how to navigate this space.
