Located in a pleasant residential neighbourhood, the house is a compact building - almost a cube - completely surrounded by an essential perimeter 3-metre-wide patio, which is the minimum required separation according to regulations. The owners wanted to keep the pre-existing garden with pool and shed at the back of the plot. The perimeter patio, which completely surrounds the house, is like an outdoor room that relates with different intensities to all the (interior) parts of the ground floor, giving different qualities and uses to each façade: to the south, a sunny garden where you can go from the kitchen; to the west, the main entrance; to the east, the uncovered parking with direct access to the kitchen; and to the north, a terrace that connects the house to the highest level of the pre-existing garden and pool. The elements that make up the patio (fences, pavements, benches, etc.) are worked on homogeneously in order to turn them into a single entity. Over time the vegetation will end up giving it the intended character and atmosphere. The house and the perimeter patio are built with black concrete block, a material that allows solving both the structure of load-bearing walls and the façade - where the block is left visible from the inside and outside. On the outside, the same black block is also used for the pavements and walls. The structure of the house is made of load-bearing walls: three concentric walls successively finish each of the three slabs, making them only work in compression. Thus, the innermost wall reaches the sanitary slab, the middle wall supports the slab of the first floor and the outer leaf reaches the last slab, that of the roof. Inside the house, the block is left visible, unclad, in a large part of the facings of the main pieces. Recycled pieces of the hydraulic mosaic of the house that formerly occupied the plot are used for the steps of the staircase. Below (the staircase), where the block walls are thicker (30cm), a fireplace opens into the living room and kitchen.

The new housing for university students is located on the same block as the Vallès School of Architecture. The proposal aims to maintain the balance between existing buildings, outdoor spaces and the new student residence. It consists of two blocks of ground floor and a floor above which are parallel to the street, with a large central atrium. The program makes it possible to imagine intense cohabitation between users, both on an individual level, thanks to the interior flexibility of the homes, and on a collective level, thanks to the use of the atrium as a space for social events. The project opts for an industrialised construction through a single prefabricated concrete housing module with a minimum of fixed elements. All modules and finishes are removable and recyclable, or reusable. The building is divided into two floors to take advantage of the existing topography, making the access possible without the need for an elevator and reducing the surface area of walkways and stairs.

The proposal aims to take advantage of the entire usable area of the plot in order to be able to build the house on a single (ground) floor. This means that the house is a triangle parallel to the boundaries of the lot, minimising circulation spaces with a single central distributor, allowing a constant relationship between the interior and the exterior. Given the height difference between the plot and the street, which is higher, the triangular roof, almost an icon, becomes the fourth façade of the house. During the drafting of the project the budget was cut by 65%. This strongly conditioned all construction decisions: systems, materials, etc., eliminating everything unnecessary and giving the house an extremely austere and very expressive materiality, both inside and outside.

One of the main challenges was getting the house to establish a very close relationship with the garden, so that one was an extension of the other and vice versa. Without this not depending on the inevitable, and so recurring glass locks, they wanted, and we wanted, walls. A walled house in a garden for art collectors. The proposal seeks to find the balance between placing the greatest number of pieces on the ground floor and keeping the garden sufficiently free of buildings. This is made with a volumetric composition of three boxes scattered around the plot, almost aligned and rammed to the north, generating the wider outdoor area to the south. The interstices generated between the boxes are covered, creating two sheltered areas completely open to the garden, which are closed with large folding windows. Spaces with a very different atmosphere to the interior rooms of the 'boxes'; corresponding more to the world of the garden than that of the house.

The plot is located in the old town of Granollers. It is a 6.5-metre-wide and very long plot between partitions that has access from two streets. Of the existing construction, which was in a dilapidated state, it was only possible to preserve the façade on the main street, which was kept in good condition and had a certain heritage interest. The clients wanted to differentiate two areas within the house very clearly: a domestic area where family life was to develop and a second independent functioning area which had to serve both to have a more secluded and quiet living space in everyday life, as well as to receive visitors or organise collective meals in more sporadic situations. Urban planning conditions allowed building only in alignment with roads and therefore the division of the two areas within the plot was automatic. The domestic part is located on the most central street and in the western area, separated by the central garden, the most segregated part linked to the vehicular access. The east-west orientation of the plot and the narrowness of the access streets made it very difficult for the house to have good solar capture through the street façades. This condition, added to the difficulties in achieving privacy on the ground floor, led us to withdraw the buildings from the street, creating access yards that would also act as solar collectors for the roof, creating transitional spaces between the street and the house, between the external and internal climate. We put some semi-covered spaces that can be used by means of retractable covers that allow capture in winter and ventilation in summer. In this way, pedestrian access from the most central street and vehicular access from the other street are solved, avoiding the typical marginal and poorly qualified spaces that are usually generated by car parks and pedestrian access from the street. The qualities of privacy, light, space and thermal comfort of these entrance spaces allow the house to be used and perceived from end to end, without hidden or residual spaces. These bioclimatic spaces become the first step in a succession of spaces that run from one street to the next offering a great variety of conditions, characteristics and explicitly differentiated properties. The sum of this succession of spaces and climates creates a ground floor of 345 m2 and 53 m long where the most collective and intense uses of the house will be located and which functions as a large continuous distributor which is accessed by the stairs that lead to the most private or service rooms located on the ground and basement floors. The treatment of each room in an individualised way but at the same time carefully connected to its neighbouring rooms makes it possible to identify the specificities of each space very clearly, but at the same time to integrate them all into a whole. This strategy makes it easier for outdoor spaces to acquire living room characteristics and become just another room in the house. Thus, this large ground floor has low, high, long interior rooms, semi-exterior covered and bioclimatised rooms, covered exterior and outdoor rooms. The sequence of spaces tries to create a certain ambiguity about what is interior and what is exterior, but at the same time the exterior spaces are intentionally differentiated by intensifying the vegetation and uncoated ceramics that with their more material and natural presence manage to create less domesticated atmospheres, builds landscapes on a plot with no views. The organisation based on linked rooms is totally related to the structural system of the house, which is why to use a wall system that materially reinforces the typology was chosen. The load-bearing walls embrace all the spaces and limit the size and proportion of the openings between spaces, so that the structure radically conditions the experience of the house. The materiality of the ceramics, the different textures of the factory, the thickness of the walls, the ability to self-regulate humidity and its thermal inertia are experiences that go with each type of space. Space is structure and structure shapes space. The relationships between the different structural units produce structural discontinuities that must be resolved and that become opportunities to organise the ceramic factory by creating post-compressed beams where the solid brick rows are reinforced and stratify the structural walls in strips between sills and lintels creating a gradient of densities from the thinnest and most massive pieces on the ground floor to the thickest and most perforated on the upper floors. A new expressiveness is achieved from the different rhythms and textures that emerge from the structural requests of the ceramic factory. The organisation of the matter and the spaces tries to prioritise an optimal passive behaviour of the house, starting from the bioclimatic courtyards that guarantee a thermal stability between 15 and 25ºC; an improved climate in between which also reduces the demand for the spaces that are directly related to it greatly. The structural system and the double ceramic sheet of the façades with 10cm of wood fibers guarantee a very good relationship between thermal insulation and interior thermal inertia. The solar protections are hung on the outside of the façade, avoiding thermal bridges and delinking the solar protection from the window hole, as if it were a secondary, more dynamic element, a circumstantial addition that could change or be replaced along the years. The house has just been air-conditioned using radiant systems linked to a geothermal system that allows passive exchange with the ground. In addition to radiant floors, sheet metal collaborative slabs are earth-activated structures that act as large radiators or radiant surfaces and help dissipate heat in the summer. This high internal inertia linked to the temperature of the ground allows a very stable thermal behaviour throughout the year with minimal consumption.

The project is based on three premises: to understand the value of the history of Lleialtat Santsenca (1928), a former workers’ cooperative in the Sants district; know exactly the (physical) state of the building to take advantage of everything that can be used; and be sensitive to the whole process of collaboration that the neighbourhood organisations began in 2009 to recover it. There are four basic objectives: first of all, to take advantage of everything that was useful in the original building, demolishing what was not reusable; second, to draw up an intervention strategy defining those essential actions, of a more conservationist or more additive nature, which allow the recovery and increase of the potential use of all the spaces; third, to establish an intense dialogue – and have it if necessary – with the context; and fourth, to draw up a sustainable proposal, both with regard to pre-existent and new interventions. Inspired by the Lina Bo Bardi Office Theatre, the Atrium is a bioclimatised intermediate space capable of structuring all traffic through a set of walkways and stairs that evoke the image of construction scaffolding. The building operates thermally based on passive strategies based on inertia and insulation; three light roofs allow natural lighting and facilitate ventilation. The increase in the volume of the roofs makes it possible to capture the sun: in winter it captures heat which is reversed by means of recuperators; in summer, the air in the upper layer of the Atrium is overheated, generating a very powerful convection that expels hot air through the windows of the ridges, powered by automatic sensors.

...A small plot facing south - the result of the segregation of the garden at Judith's parents' house... This brief description of the site contains the main conditions that explain the project's strategy: the size explains the number of floors (3) as well as the minimum possible occupation (40 m2). The parents are the reason to concentrate the free space by turning the resulting garden into the entrance and hall of the house. The orientation explains how the south façade is the main source of lighting and views, which it does without any kind of limit, taking advantage of a set of large recycled windows. The openings are complemented by a staggered polycarbonate gallery that acts as a collector and protector. Only the north façade contains other windows to allow good cross ventilation. The staircase, with a single section, transversal and reversible, is the vertical circulation and distributor of the 6 resulting spaces. Out of these, only the bathroom and laundry room are specific to one function, while the rest take on the programme in the most ambiguous domestic way possible that ended up determining the customers. The spaces are intentionally characterised in terms of geometry, matter, and comfort but little determined in terms of function.

A Peruvian pepper. On one side of the plot there was a very large and beautiful evergreen tree. Nearby, one of the neighbours’ fences was completely covered by a large bougainvillea and other varieties of climbing plants, a very pleasant corner with a lot of character, which was the only preserved part of the garden of an old nursery school. In that same area there were also some other trees, different bushes and a small palm tree. In the rest of the plot, there was almost nothing left, but it had some trees that jutted out from behind the fences of the neighbouring estates. The plot is located in a low-density neighbourhood, close to the centre of Castelldefels, where the vast majority of the neighbouring buildings are very old and, therefore, gardens with lots of vegetation have been consolidating there. The proposal tries to take advantage of and enhance the pre-existing elements on the plot, such as the dividing fences with the neighbours, the different perimeter plant species, types of climbers, groups of shrubby plants and above all a large tree, a Peruvian pepper, which is located in the southeast half of the plot. The house is articulated in relation to these perimeter pre-existences and especially around the large tree, developing only on the ground floor trying not to compete with the height of the tree, to always be below it in a human scale relationship and at the same time always looking for a direct and frank relationship with the garden and its perimeter. A garden that, instead of being an addition to the house, surrounds it and becomes an integral part of the experience, trying to make the garden and house form a single unit. Thus, the organisation of the house has a lot to do with the type of relationship that each part establishes with the garden. The important presence of the pepper tree and some other trees located on neighbouring plots, all of them evergreen, creates a lot of shade on the plot, leaving it too protected from the winter sun. After analysing the solar incidence on the house, we knew that it was difficult to capture sufficient radiation through the façades, so it was decided to capture the solar radiation through the roof. From this need the two most unique spaces in the house arise: the dining room and the study which, thanks to the precise and directed inclination of the roof, configure higher areas, crowned by large upper windows that allow natural light to be captured, solar radiation in winter and shading and ventilation in summer. These spaces, apart from their bioclimatic potential, are the ones that structure all the others, organising circulations and establishing more complex relationships between them. Around the dining room, the fireplace and the kitchen, the laundry room, a bathroom and the piano room are grouped, while surrounding the study we find the bedrooms and a second bathroom. From these spaces, we can visually relate to the outside through the roof or indirectly through the other rooms, creating chains of different qualities and intensities of light that shade and degrade the passage from inside to outside and that throughout the day, and depending on the solar incidence, they alternately single out the rooms, favouring the diversity of environments. Thanks to the rotation of one of the rooms, a gap appears that interrupts the continuity of the façade, breaks the system of central courtyards and allows the garden to sneak inside the house. It is through these interruptions that it is accessed and therefore the central spaces become transitional between the outside and the inside, patios and halls at the same time. This twist, the abundance of natural light that enters through the upper skylights, added to the rougher and more natural ceramic flooring just gives them a more outdoor, patio or garden extension atmosphere than the other rooms of the house that are more conventional, both in their proportions, the treatment of light and their finishes. The dining room and the study preserve the finishes and textures of the façade and, therefore, despite being interior, they remind us or transport us to the outside, while in the perimeter rooms all the finishes are continuous coverings much more typical of an interior The double cross organisation of the building, apart from making the centrality of the main spaces possible, also serves to reinforce the autonomy of each room with respect to the house as a whole, so that all the spaces can establish a very close relationship with the garden. Its compact layout, with a lot of façade, turns the rooms into boxes surrounded by a garden that at the same time surrounds them, also separates them from each other and they only communicate with each other through the central spaces which, due to their bioclimatic characteristics, in many moments also behave as an interior extension of the garden. From the outside, the cross arrangement succeeds in fragmenting the perimeter garden into narrower and more collected spaces as if they were outside spaces. The spaces that result from the tension between the geometry of the house and the perimeter of the plot are like a second house on the outside. In fact, the best space in the house is outside the building, between the walls of the boxes and under the large crown of the existing tree, as if the whole house had undergone the tree and in its shadow. The walls that make up the boxes are always thick because they solve the structure of the building and its thermal behavior in a single layer so that we cannot differentiate the façades from the structure of the interior enclosures. It is a single wall that is folded and unfolded creating the distribution from the same constructive solution. A wall thick enough to be self-stable, dense enough to support the slabs but at the same time light enough to be the thermal insulation of the house. A single-sheet solution, from a 30 cm thick piece of lightened clay ceramic block (Poroton-Planziegel T-10, from Wienerberger) that has a very low thermal transmittance, while also providing the house of much thermal inertia. The combination of insulation and thermal inertia in the same layer allows passively regulating and optimising the hygrothermal exchange between the interior and the exterior and guarantees very high levels of comfort throughout the year. The wall is organised by horizontal strips, in those areas where the thermal requirements are not so strict, combining different models of lighter clay blocks to respond case by case to the different constructive requirements based on their formats and their thermal and bearing properties. Above this wall, the roof is flat and only the roofs of the central spaces stick out, which incline and stand out from the wall structure with a very light external materiality, typical of a firefly, and which on the contrary cover the interior space with a heavy concrete slab, with a lot of thermal inertia that accentuates the lightness of the practicable closures of the skylight. The slightly reflective finish of the slab achieves a better diffusion of natural light while at certain times it reflects the green of the exterior vegetation achieving a certain dematerialisation of the roof and making the large tree more present inside the house.

The plot is in a low-density residential area where houses with gardens predominate, the slope was gentle and continuous with good sunshine throughout the day. Urban planning regulations allowed building more than necessary, being able to build a ground floor and two additional landings with the main restriction of separating 6 metres from the alignment of the road and 3 metres from the rest of the boundaries. The project was based on the restriction provided by the geotechnical study which indicated that the first metres of underground had a very low resistance capacity. In order to avoid a solution with a deep foundation, economically and environmentally unviable, it was necessary to profoundly rethink the organization of the house and its construction systems. We needed a very light construction or alternatively a construction that distributed the loads very evenly on the ground. The option of light construction was ruled out due to cost and above all because at the same time we believed it necessary to have the maximum internal thermal inertia to guarantee the best passive comfort, therefore the first decision was to make a house only on the ground floor avoiding load accumulations concentrated in one area of the land. The second is to use beams instead of sanitary ware to transmit the weight of the pavements and the overloads of use directly to the ground without going through the foundations. The third is to use a linear structural system, in this case load-bearing walls, that distribute the loads from the roof to the ground as much as possible. The fourth, to organise these structural walls in a completely regular way, in the form of an equidistant grid, so that the walls and foundations collect the same proportional part of the load of the building and guarantee a sufficiently homogeneous descent along the terrain. This organisation allowed the project to be pushed to the limit, adjusting to the maximum and overloading the land to its limit to achieve the heaviest possible house that had the maximum mass (inertia) allowed by the land. That the house was developed entirely on the ground floor, allowed it to be built with a simple technology of load-bearing walls with short spans, giving an optimal structural response to the characteristics of the land and above all allowing to adjust to the costs foreseen for its execution. Although the plot was already quite flat, the earth from the foundation excavations was used to finish flattening the perimeter garden at the level of the house, enhancing the interior-exterior continuity to the maximum. The freed volume under the sill was refilled with a thick bed of gravel creating a thermal accumulator with a lot of inertia that pre-treats the renewal air so that in winter the intake air is heated to cross the gravels and cools it in the summer. It was always attempted that the resolution of a problem became, at the same time, an occasion to introduce other improvements to the project. The program is distributed in ten equivalent spaces of 3.5 x 5.12. The versatility of these 18m2 and the generous relationships between them offers, surprisingly, a lot of freedom at the same time to organise the uses and allows us to imagine that the house can be used in many different ways over the years, creating rooms that can be understood as segregated or as a single large continuous space. They are spaces configured directly by the structure and by its materiality; unclad, combining ceramic brick load-bearing walls, the concrete floor and ceramic revolute roofs. All materials are structural and therefore essential for the construction of a living space. An attempt was made to solve an architecture that emerged from the minimal and necessary, avoiding superfluous elements but at the same time suggesting the maximum possible use potential. The house is just an infrastructure where users can choose the best way to appropriate it. The house was oriented and distributed internally with a predominant south-east direction to enhance direct winter solar capture, easily protect itself from the summer sun, while protecting the main garden from the dominant north-west winds and stimulating some better cross ventilation inside the house. The need for good sun protection in the summer was a good opportunity to work intensively with the vegetation creating a vertical garden, a transition between interior and exterior, between the mineral element and the plants. In this case, the vegetation works by reproducing the interior grid in the form of small deciduous vegetable chapels that, without constituting a complete exterior room, will create a stationary over-thickness that, superimposed on the ceramic construction, will prevent the summer sun from overheating the house These small chapels are organised from wooden slats that, like guardians, guide the climbers by tracing and protecting each of the openings in the house. Given that the house has a lot of mass and therefore a lot of thermal inertia, if the user does night ventilation and uses the gravel bed correctly, excellent summer thermal comfort can be ensured without the need for air conditioning. The construction is intentionally low and elongated so that it takes on slim proportions that, together with the transverse openings and the plant solar protection, minimise the impact and integrate the presence of the construction within the plot so that one has the experience that the house is not an addition, which is very permeable and is fully connected to the garden from outside to inside, from inside to outside, from side to side. The house and the garden would like to be one and the same thing, so that when you live there you have the feeling of living and using the whole plot.

The ICTA-ICP building located on the UAB (Autonomous University of Barcelona) campus is a research centre in environmental sciences and paleontology. Consistent with their fields of research, the building's users bet on an ambitious response to sustainability challenges. The building, an isolated volume of five floors of 40x40m and two basements, accommodates the following uses. On the ground floor: lobby, bar, classrooms and administration; on the following 3 floors, offices and laboratories; on the deck, greenhouses and rest areas; in the semi-basement, parking and machine rooms; and in the basement, warehouses and the rest of the laboratories. Both offices and laboratories are uses with a lot of internal load that tend to be hot. The ICTA-ICP has been designed to take advantage of it in winter and to dissipate it in summer. We plan the building as an adaptable and flexible infrastructure to possible changes of use.

El solar: Una parcel·la en una urbanització de l’Escala sense característiques especials, a prop de cala Montgó. Un solar de forma rectangular de 600 m2, amb tots els serveis urbans, topografia suau, orientat Nord-Sud en el sentit llarg del solar i sense preexistencies, ni vegetals ni construïdes. Les condicions: El programa és senzill, una casa per a la parella, però s’hi afegeixen unes condicions que ajuden a arrencar el procés de decisions: la casa ha de tenir dues plantes per tal de veure la muntanya del Pení i els turons del cap de Creus (no hi ha garanties, però l’esperança de tenir millor vistes que els veïns ens fa acceptar la condició). Els clients imaginen espais porxats en totes dues plantes com a forma de relació amb l’exterior. Poques habitacions però amb bany per a rebre convidats i una peça en planta baixa que pugui funcionar com a habitació auxiliar o magatzem de mobles i estris. El projecte: Donat l’entorn poc agraït del solar, es va proposar plantar la vegetació al seu perímetre. La intenció no era crear una tanca si no modificar el perímetre perceptiu mitjançant la densificació de la vegetació. Mentre la planta baixa es relaciona amb l’exterior més immediat, la planta primera es relaciona amb les vistes llunyanes del cap de Creus. Seran aquestes condicions les que marcaran la primera lògica constructiva de la casa: una estructura de tres plans horitzontals completament oberts en el seu perímetre. Amb l’objectiu de donar resposta al programa ‘confortable’ de la casa, el 50% de la superfície de cada planta s’ocuparà amb una caixa lleugera. Aquestes caixes es disposaran en sentits contraris en cada una de les plantes per tal de marcar la relació més òptima amb l'exterior segons el nivell. La capsa de planta baixa conté la cuina i una habitació auxiliar/magatzem. En aquesta planta la caixa es situa a nord per tal d'afavorir l'orientació a sud de l'espai galeria, funcionant així com a porxo a l'estiu i com espai captador al hivern. La capsa de planta primera conté dues petites habitacions. La seva mida afavorirà a l'apropiació de l'espai galeria que funcionarà com a mirador a l'estiu i com a estudi al hivern. Les capses contenen el confort mentre que l'espai vidriat es converteixen en espais no programats, aptes per a ser usats tot l'any en base a un funcionament tèrmic passiu. La construcció: L'estructura de pilars i lloses és la gran inversió patrimonial de la casa. No només conté la seva inèrcia sinó que també caracteritza els espais galeria i per extensió, els de tota la casa. Les capses pertanyen al món mecànic. Estan composades per entramats de fusta i tancaments de panell OSB i, per plaques de cartró-guix. La cambra d'aire dels tancaments permet allotjar una gran quantitat d'aïllament, evitar l’excés d’inèrcia en programes que s’han d’escalfar molt ràpid al hivern i el pas de totes les instal·lacions en una casa on l’estructura de formigó queda completament vista i no amaga res. El revestiment de les capses és de taulells de fusta-ciment. El funcionament: Les galeries s’orienten a Est i Sud i garanteixen un alt nivell de captació solar, així els espais poden funcionar de dia a l'hivern sense climatització, alhora actuaran com a coixí tèrmic per als espais de confort. De nit les cortines redueixen les pèrdues i una estufa de llenya permet l’ús dels espais. Aquest funcionament permet que la casa no es refredi en els períodes que resta buida. Les capses, altament aïllades, estanques i sense inèrcia si que són climatitzades amb un sistema de bomba de calor aerotèrmica que permet un escalfament molt ràpid dels espais d’ús quan els propietaris arriben després d’un llarg període d’absència.

El mur de pedra que limitava la finca recorria tot el solar i únicament deixava entreveure les copes dels arbres de l'interior. La materialitat i la irregularitat de les seves geometries li donaven caràcter i una presència especial. Però el planejament vigent obligava a unes cessions de vial que ampliaven l'amplada del carrer i feien impossible mantenir el mur existent. / Sense el mur existent, el primer i principal repte del projecte és aconseguir tornar a contextualitzar el solar, fer una casa de nova planta capaç de donar resposta coherent, respectuosa i honesta amb l'entorn. / En comptes d'ubicar-se al centre del jardí, es proposa rodejar-lo. Una casa que actui com a tanca. / Una casa-mur permet recuperar la continuïtat urbana i permet experimentar una nova tipologia molt allargada, tota en planta baixa, adaptada a la topografia i a la nova geometria del carrer. / La casa seguirà les lògiques materials i constructives del mur-tanca original, però adaptant-les als requeriments actuals. Es construirà integralment amb murs de càrrega, reutilitzant pedres del mur existent, barrejant-les amb àrids propis del solar juntament amb dosificacions de calç i ciment. En aquesta base de morter tradicional s'afegiran petites partícules aïllants de vidre reciclat insuflat. En comptes d'apilar, el mur s'encofrarà i s'anirà pujant amb una tècnica mixta entre la tàpia i el mur ciclòpic. Les capes exteriors que donen al carrer es repicaran fins fer aflorar la pedra, mentre que les cares interiors es deixaran amb l'acabat propi del mur encofrat. / Al llarg de la parcel·la el mur va variant el seu gruix i en molts casos es fa tan gruixut que permet allotjar els espais més estàtics de l’habitatge, o aquells que requereixen més privacitat, com poden ser els llits, banys, safareig, armaris, rentamans,... En una relació quasi fractal, es van resolent totes les escales del projecte, relacionant i encadenant espais cada vegada més grans fins al punt d'abraçar tota la parcel·la. Es produeix una seqüència entre els espais més domèstics i els àmbits més exteriors i salvatges. / Les relacions longitudinals es solucionen per davant del programa més estàtic, que queda adossat al mur, creant una llarga seqüència de galeries que permetran treure profit dels guanys solars durant el període d'hivern. Quan fa bon temps, les galeries es poden obrir totalment convertint-se en un gran porxo obert al jardí. Una transició entre els diferents climes de l'edifici que evoluciona constantment al llarg de l'any.

The plot was flat, slightly below the level of the two adjoining streets — one to the west and the other to the north. There were no trees. The first step was to build an opaque fence as tall as possible, around two metres high, and position the house off-centre towards the east, filling all the buildable boundaries except the west — the only side that gets sunlight throughout the year. This is where the perimeter garden becomes widest (7.6m). The rest of the garden has variable widths to comply with regulations (3m from neighbours and between 5m and 6m from the streets) — regulations often demand things that don’t always make much sense. To the north, we planted evergreen trees that, over time, will block the view from the neighbouring residential tower. The new house is structured in four concentric layers, parallel to the boundaries of the plot, like an onion. From the outside in, these are: the boundary wall, the perimeter patio, a continuous gallery surrounding the central core, and a two-storey exposed concrete block structure. In the early phases of the project, when the house was larger, the perimeter gallery served as an intermediate, bioclimatised space for complementary uses, with all the main rooms housed within the core. Later, due to budget adjustments, the central core was reduced to include only the bedrooms, bathrooms and staircase. The common areas were relocated to the gallery. Almost everything happens in the gallery. It functions as a veranda, with certain echoes of Charles Moore’s Orinda House, offering intense and seasonally variable interactions with the patio. In summer, large sliding closures transform it into a porch. In winter, large corner windows frame views of the garden and capture solar radiation from the west. In this house, the glass panes are fixed, while the movable closures are opaque — a condition that constantly transforms the façade and gallery, depending on what is open or closed. As in Lina Bo Bardi’s Santa Maria dos Anjos Chapel, the veranda, with its pitched roof, is built using lightweight, dry construction systems: a wooden structure (columns, beams and roof) and external joinery of glass, aluminium, wood and corrugated sheet metal. The pitched roof channels rainwater directly into the patio without any collection system. In contrast to the lightness of the gallery, the central core is massive and compact, offering greater thermal inertia. The block walls and floor slabs are left exposed in the gallery and painted white in the rooms. In winter, the veranda shelters and heats the entire central core (bathrooms and bedrooms), which has no dedicated climate-control system on the ground floor. The concrete flooring, with high thermal inertia, absorbs direct solar radiation and is heated by underfloor heating, as are the first-floor bedrooms. The heating is provided by an aerothermal heat pump. In summer, when the sliding panels are closed, the windows are shaded by the overhanging pitched roof and reflective exterior curtains. Inside, the sloped ceiling supports passive ventilation through stratification, expelling hot air via four concealed ducts in the façades that function as small solar chimneys. This promotes natural air renewal and helps to cool the veranda.

Sobre les runes de l’antic Mas Geli, del qual només es conservaven dues façanes amb contraforts i un parell d’espais amb voltes de pedra, s’aixeca aquesta nova casa, que reinterpreta valors de l’arquitectura vernacular sense renunciar a la contemporaneïtat de la proposta. L’estructura del mas original determina tant la tipologia estructural (murs i sostres massius) com l'organització espacial (seqüència de sales estructurals) de la nova casa. Adoptant una retícula ortogonal, les sales es configuren amb murs de pedra existents, murs de formigó ciclopi (aprofitant runa del mas antic) i cobertes amb voltes. La coberta, de fusta i teula, manté l'altura original i restitueix el perfil de dues aigües. Un gran porxo en L s'incorpora a la nau principal creant un espai intermedi ombrejat, propi de l'arquitectura mediterrània. La cuina emergeix com l'espai interior més representatiu, el cor de la casa. Situada al sud-oest, té doble alçària i vista cap a ponent, cap a les vinyes i la bassa.