house between almonds

san juan de moro, castellon.

2016

The villa is located just outside San Juan de Moro, famous for the manufacture of ceramics in Castellon. It is set in a small isolated group of houses surrounded by olive plantations and almond trees. The disorder of the house along with the various construction systems indicates that it was built in different phases.

The first approach was to understand the running of the house, it has appropriate construction system fir its time: stone walls separated by three spans of 4,20m. The first span rises on the first floor with a sloping roof. The original layout consisted of a succession of countless rooms, some even isolated from natural light and ventilation. The heart of the house, the courtyard was the most marginal and dingy space, covered by fiber cement roofs was used as a laundry room and warehouse.

The main proposal consists of opening the volume using the existing courtyard on the ground floor. The structure is left unchanged wiping the entire house of the rest of the walls staying connected together and opening all spaces outside through the patio and terrace offering views of the olive groves and almond which previously lacked.

The top floor contains the sleeping area and the ground floor the day area, which is organized around the courtyard, becoming the focal point located on the central span. In the same span as the patio is planned the kitchen, opened to the courtyard using it as an outside dining room. Next to the kitchen in the first span, the new position of the stairs is the inner element that organizes the house. On the ground floor, separates but at the same time connects the entrance hall, the kitchen and the living room. And on the first floor separates the children’s bedroom, from the main bedroom. Finally the last span holds the kids play room and a secondary lounge.

The result of the renovation are different spaces connected to each other, each of them have large openings to different outer space, becoming unique spaces. Daylighting is present in all areas, controlled differently depending on their orientation.

Materiality is reduced to a set of combinations of concrete, wood and white, where the thick walls coexist with large glass panels.

san juan de moro, castellón. spain.
367 m2
collaborator rafa parga
infography raúl ferrándiz
2016