Description

As in his earlier design for the Casa Gaspar, Alberto Campo Baeza makes the envelope the theme of this family home on the outskirts of Cádiz. High walls separate the plot from its surroundings. From the outside, this almost creates the impression of a voluminous base for the centrally placed house. But here the wall is simply staking out the borders: the zone between the wall and the house remains ‘leftover space’, and not a carefully shaped courtyard. But the wall does open up to the great green space–though it is even higher at this point–and links up with the building via roofing. The building itself is a precise square, divided into four equal parts.

The servant section with en­trance, guest apartment, kitchen and bedrooms is placed on the top floor on the street side, with the served section as a living area and dining room on the garden side. Hence the house with its living area on the ground floor clearly faces the park-like external area, via a terrace platform that includes a bathing pool. There is some lavish glazing here, while the volume of the building itself is pierced only by a few square apertures. The building rises to a height of three storeys, the topmost floor consisting of roof terraces, access and the library. The latter area is central to the concept, as Campo Baeza links the living area on the ground floor with this gallery-like library. The intention is to create a diagonal relationship between the ‘displaced’ higher spaces, accentuated by a skylight above the gallery. The result is a rich spatial relationship with a sophisticated arrangement of space, further reinforcing the contrast with the servant section in the other half. The diagonal dynamic sets the rigid order of the structure on top of the building in motion, the space ‘expands’.

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Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.