CASA FELIPA
We live in two countries: one urban, one rural. Just one hour from Valencia lies Casas de Pradas, a small village of 84 inhabitants.
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Felipa’s life was the archetype of a village woman—working to exhaustion under the summer sun, tending animals before dawn, harvesting vines in the morning dew, caring for her parents and later her grandchildren. The land was rugged and often unyielding; the home, an extremely narrow and modest house shared with livestock, expanded over generations through intuitive and makeshift additions.
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Development and mechanization drove her children away, leaving the house to slowly dissolve, as memories do. Only now, generations later, do we recognize the cultural loss of the emptied countryside—and feel the urge to return, to touch, smell, and inhabit the landscape once again.
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The project reimagines Felipa’s home as a welcoming house, opening itself to the landscape while embracing contemporary ways of living. The interior is completely cleared, removing failing partitions and floors and leaving behind the stone shell of party walls and façade. A new ceramic-block wall reinforces the structure, tied together by an inclined timber roof that lifts like a hat to draw in sunlight.
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In rural contexts, one does not begin with a catalogue of materials but with a living inventory: what is at hand, what endures, what can be maintained.
Each texture adds a layer of time and use; in their accumulation, the genealogies of the environment are revealed, allowing us to read both the history of the place and the possibility of a future.
Custom-designed pieces are also incorporated—modular stools, a trapezoidal table, a sofa bed—small domestic engineering’s that reinforce the continuity between architecture, craft, and place.
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The spatial journey begins at the lower street, passing through a new courtyard and unfolding over a topographic floor that creates varied places for pause and gathering. Light platforms and connecting walkways host essential functions, while new uses emerge—spaces for self-care, social life, and contemplation.
The route culminates at the upper terrace, a place to breathe and gaze over misty sunrises and lilac sunsets.
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In this way, the house becomes more than shelter: it becomes both a path into the landscape and a return to our culture, our stories, and ourselves.
