HOUSE IN VALONGO
This is a small house that feels larger than it is, yet lacks nothing essential for the domestic lives of its inhabitants. From this perspective, it is a house as all houses ought to be.
Through a typological journey, we arrived at a design that reconstructs the house much ‘as found’ — though turned upside down. The bedrooms lie below, nestled between the street and a quiet courtyard, each with its own degree of privacy. The entrance hall, with its eccentric geometry, offers a surprising accessibility and a rare generosity for a dwelling of this dimension. The main living space occupies the entire upper floor, underneath the existing pitched roof. Here, the house opens up to its best views, potentiates cross-ventilation, and a more generous ceiling height celebrated by plasterboard catenaries shaped on site — shaped on site by chance and by the workers’ hands.
At the rear, a staircase running parallel to the party wall was all that remained from the original structure. Aside from it, only the stone walls and a timber frame — floor and roof — existed, both in relatively good condition. The staircase was fragile, yet its odd placement served as a cue. Because it was precarious, it was replaced. The other elements were kept and revalued through the new design. The existing timbers were painted, allowing for maintenance with subtle replacements and ensuring a continuous reading across the space. Very little was added. On the lower level, a few light partition walls outline the new rooms, each of similar size. Above, a compact infrastructural core conceals the home’s technical utilities. The existing roof truss now rests on a new, robust timber beam, enabling the opening of a high-set window overlooking the garden. A light wooden terrace ensures a seamless connection between spaces.
The execution drawings were minimal. The spatial arrangement was preserved, but the slow and close collaboration with the builders allowed for a series of improvised moments that would have never been foreseeable in the original design. Outside, one finds an exposed cork façade, three octagonal concrete columns poured using salvaged formwork, a concrete water tank, and a mirrored wall reflecting the beautiful garden designed with pomo landscapes. Like the project itself, the house is pragmatic and honest. A kind of primitive urban hut, conceived as a holiday home yet meant to be lived in all year round.
