Torrijos House

Klaus-Peter Gast

Description

This house for a family with three children is sited on a new parcel plot on the outskirts of Barcelona. The plots are roughly the same size as each other and permit only linear development, so the houses are placed in rows along a slightly curving street. The architects Lluis Jubert and Eugenia Santacana tried to escape from the simple type of a block-like house with a front and back garden by designing an essentially small figure extending into the depth of the site, opening on to the long side of the plot. It is thus possible to project spaces outwards, especially the living area on the ground floor, so that it is difficult to look in from the outside, and in order to create south-facing sections.

Linear access to the rows of rooms is from the access situation directly from the street, on the ground floor. This means that the entrance axis provides a kind of spine for the building. A guest apartment, then the living room and–after a terrace section–the kitchen are arranged one after the other. This disposition functions as an accumulation of highly individual spaces, projecting their significance outwards according to their function. The living room remains dominant; it thrusts forward to a greater extent than anything else and opens to the south-east, on the terrace side, with large-scale glazing.

The serial arrangement of rooms is pursued consistently on the first floor, though the children’s bedrooms remain within the lines of the main part of the building, while the parents’ bedroom has a bay. A viewing room at the very top makes it possible to look out into the distance. The architects are pursuing a clearly intelligible division of functions in this design, but lend the composition as a whole expressive sculptural force through the interplay of uniformly cubic-white sections, protruding to different extents.