CASAMILC
In the historic centre of Madrid the narrow winding streets form an organic
layout. Here and there the residential fabric that shapes the urban structure
is dotted with small squares and unique buildings that articulate the
ensemble.
In this context full of history of old town Madrid, overlooking a square and
next to a convent, we find a residential building from the late eighteenth
century.
It meets the characteristics of Madrid’s residential archetype, that was later
replicated in the nineteenth-century Castro expansion: houses between
party walls of about five floors high, built with a mixed structure of brick load
bearing walls and timber framing in parallel bays to the street. They form
closed blocks that open internally to courtyards illuminating the interior
rooms. The facades are plastered or made out of bricks and with mountain
granite base cladding. They are composed of ordered rhythms, vertical
openings interspersed with wooden joinery balconies and bay windows of
wrought iron and glass.
Internally, the project responds to the particular needs of its inhabitants
while committing to the spatial and material characteristics of the existing
architecture, of great flexibility. The singular space organizing the house is a
large library that welcomes you as you enter and articulates the transition
between the night area, that overlooks the inner courtyard, and the day
area, that faces the street.
Wooden flooring and joinery of classic inspiration coexist with contemporary
textures and patterns that singularize the transitions through curved and
folding shapes. From this spatial and conceptual centre of the house,
crossing the book-covered walls, different routes connecting to other rooms
form visual openings, highlighting the main rooms that overlook the square.
In bathrooms and kitchen continuous surfaces are alternated with metal
details and Portuguese pink marble, which bring a certain classical
solemnity that is confronted with elements and sharp colours that activate
the space.
In a constant dialogue between the initial elegant house and the new
intervention, the project introduces fresh elements of distortion while
maintaining harmony.
