“Did you forget the windows?” a neighbour asked —with that inevitable small-town irony— while peeking into the house through the half-open door.
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In small towns, communication —and especially indiscreet curiosity— is the mortar that holds social (and spatial) relationships together. What first strikes visitors about Casa JAR, however, is how radically reserved it appears towards the street.
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Casa JAR is an introspective house designed by Estudio Nada and Crux Arquitectura, where a succession of programmatic “cubes” embraces a large central courtyard that acts as a green lung and social core.
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Everything changes once the threshold is crossed. The house begins to reveal its argument: a central courtyard with water and vegetation organises the entire project. The dwelling becomes a domestic oasis —a climatic and social refuge where everyday life unfolds inward.
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In contrast to the dominant model of the surrounding context —the detached house surrounded by a perimeter garden— the project proposes exactly the opposite: a void at the centre and mass along the edges.
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The house as a courtyard system
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The dwelling is organised around a simple operation: emptying the centre and occupying the perimeter of the plot. On a trapezoidal site, the project concentrates the rooms along the boundaries and frees a large central courtyard that structures domestic life.
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The plan functions as a contemporary domestic cloister: a succession of almost cubic rooms attached to the edges of the site, while the courtyard —left open— becomes the heart of the house.
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An architectural promenade: cubes and rhythm
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The layout is organised through a series of interconnected volumes or “cubes”, generating a continuous perimeter route. There are no residual corridors; the house is experienced as a fluid sequence of spaces orbiting around the courtyard, turning movement into an architectural experience.
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The day areas —open kitchen, dining room and living room with fireplace— occupy the wider wings of the plan, encouraging social interaction. The night area unfolds on the opposite side, ensuring privacy while maintaining a visual relationship with the exterior.
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The floor is shaped into a gentle topography that accompanies the spatial sequence and defines different uses: steps that become built-in benches or slight level changes that frame the seating area around the fireplace.
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The timber beam structure changes direction in each room, reinforcing the independence of each programmatic cube while introducing a spatial rhythm that organises the whole.
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The courtyard: lung, thermostat and agora
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The courtyard is not merely a formal element but a genuine climatic and social device.
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Opposing openings allow constant cross-ventilation, while thick masonry walls with high thermal inertia soften temperature fluctuations.
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At the centre of the courtyard, the client decided to plant a nettle tree (Celtis australis), an emblematic tree of the village and a symbol of family memory. Its presence turns the courtyard into a small domestic landscape where nature and personal history intertwine.
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The pool and barbecue area make this space the natural extension of the living room and kitchen, establishing it as the true social heart of the house.
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Materiality: the honesty of austerity
The material palette of Casa JAR is an ode to Mediterranean vernacular construction, avoiding unnecessary artifice while seeking texture, patina and naturalness.
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The timber structure and carpentry introduce warmth and rhythm into the space. Lime renders, plaster and ceramic block surfaces provide porous materials that breathe and help stabilise the indoor environment.
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The chromatic palette remains deliberately neutral —whites, earth tones and natural wood— allowing the courtyard vegetation to take centre stage.
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Furniture is simple and restrained, with natural fabrics introducing subtle touches of colour that reinforce the domestic character of the house.
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Casa JAR is, in the words of its authors, “a public silence and an intimate celebration.” Faced with neighbours’ curiosity about the absence of street windows, the house responds with a rich and complex inner world.
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A project that shows how true luxury lies not in the display of the façade, but in the quality of space, light and shadow —and in architecture’s ability to bring people together around a tree, a table and a shared story.
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And yes, in the end we showed the house to the neighbour. She said she liked it very much.
