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This single-family house is located on the highest and most horizontal area of a rustic land.
This plot, which presents a significant slope and it is divided into terraces by existing dry stone walls, once formed part of a larger agricultural land and today is covered with native vegetation, mainly pine forest.
The project seeks to make the most out of the house location in its geographical and natural environment in order to exploit its interaction with it. That way, it takes advantage of all possible relationships between interior spaces and, specially, between indoor and outdoor spaces, offering family members the Balearic climate’s so desired “outdoor life”.
The construction is configured as a single prismatic volume of about 29x8x3.5m oriented southeast to maximise views of its own land. The main floor is divided into four functional units successively arranged: entrance-kitchen / terrace-living room / library-bedrooms / guest bedroom or home office. The volume presents two points of interruption. One gives place to the double orientation living room, which becomes the house’s central area and whose boundaries extend beyond the enclosure by integrating the entrance courtyard and the rear terrace. It becomes an interior or exterior space depending on the time of year, bringing all the surrounding nature closer to the house occupants during warm seasons. The second gap separates the family sleeping area from the guests area-home office through a glazed space and a sunken courtyard that illuminates the social area located in the basement, where the installation facilities and auxiliary spaces for the orchard are also located.
The house is provided with a wide variety of linked spaces capable of hosting all the different activities and relationships so they can occur in a fluid way. Transversely, the inward prolongation of the outside terraces, configures the living room which extends longitudinally on one end to the kitchen (where the two-sided fireplace is the link) and on the opposite to the library (a space where daily activities can be conducted in the company of other members of the family)
Without succumbing to local folk but in full compliance with local regulations, a link with the traditional architectural language has been established with typical materials found on the cottages of the island: white load bearing walls, ceramic and stone floors, and wood window and door frames. The openings in the facade, all of different proportions and sizes, appear laid out on a “disordered” pattern when observed from the exterior but they are actually looking for the “internal adjustment”, also taking aligned positions in opposite facades to facilitate adequate ventilation and allowing exterior-exterior cross views. Besides, they are protected from sunlight by concrete frames painted in blue, similar to the colour on the windows of the original building of the farm, framing the views and enhancing the plasticity of the facade. The front yard and the pool also refer to the vernacular architecture. The latter, placed on the prolongation of one of the aforementioned stone walls, takes the colour of the ponds found everywhere in the island and is separated from the house by a space that will be colonized again by native vegetation which will be changing with the seasons.
With a short career of only thirteen years, Italian architect Giuseppe Terragni (1904-1943) left an important legacy of built works that are now used as classic references of modern and rationalist architecture.
We traveled to Como and Milan to visit Terragni’s emblematic works that clearly reflect his style. These projects are based on the organized configuration of architectural elements that individually appear clean, pure, and expressive, but together also form a harmonious whole.
These are: Novocomum, Casa Rustici, Asilo Sant’Elia, Casa Giuliani Frigerio and Casa Lavezzari.
History tells us that back in the 20s Terragni was commissioned to design a housing project with a classical facade, to fit in with how most residential projects were designed at the time. Terragni followed the rules and presented to the municipality a traditional building which was quickly approved. However, he had another idea in mind. During the construction period, his drawings took the form of an avant-garde building, the one that today is an icon of rationalist architecture in Italy.
Initially, Terragni’s work was considered for demolition however, Novocomun became one of the most popular buildings in the city. This was thanks to the unprecedented design comprising a clean, orthogonal volume of reinforced concrete broken at the corners by cylindrical shapes and curves. Over these large openings is suspended the mass of the top floor.
Designed by Terragni in collaboration with Pietro Lingeri and located on the main avenue Corso Sempione in Milan, this apartment building was conceived at first as two separate volumes, arranged perpendicular to the street.
Using a never before seen style for those years, the architect decided to unify the two units through a third architectural element: the balcony. Thanks to long-terraces oriented to the parks in the avenue, he managed to generate a facade without much effort, which better integrated the neighboring buildings. This ‘permeable’ facade marks the entrance and creates an inner courtyard for circulation and common areas. Highlighted through the use of white marble is the grid of pillars and walls of the structure.
Two volumes and a unifying element. Terragni reuses this conceptual plan diagram to develop this kindergarten project. One of the volumes contains four classrooms, while the other contains the dining room and the bathrooms. In this case, the central element is the access, sharing a unique space with a main hall and reception protruding from the facade and rising above the ground. All this is part of an imaginary square about 40 meters on each side, forming a ‘U’ hugging an interior playground.
Its arrangement seems ‘turned’ in relation to the way it responds to solar orientation, but it is actually a play on the relationship of the building to the other houses in the neighborhood. Again, the grids of pillars are explicit in the design and the geometric process of the proposal.
This is the last building designed by Terragni before leaving for the war, forcing him to complete the design through letters with his friend and collaborator Luigi Zuccoli. The interesting thing about this building is the dismantling of its different levels in section, which is expressed in different facades exposed to the street on its three sides.
They appear as staggered rooms in between floors and apartments with different spatial configurations, plus flexible enclosures connected by movable panels. The facades reflect this through a set of sliding windows, balconies, and expressive linear metallic elements.
Clearly, this last project is not one of Terragni’s emblematic works, but it is a building that summarizes several of the styles he developed throughout his career. Located in a trapezoid shaped corner lot, Terragni solves this complexity through the same diagram used before; two volumes that rotate and fused at the narrowest point of the site, conjuring access and circulations.
Here, Terragni takes advantage of the difficult triangular space by placing the stairs in the same style he used years before in his Novocomun project. Again, balconies appear as pure and independent facade elements, in this case, framed by two large blind walls ranging from the first to the last level.
*Photographs taken by the author in May 2013.
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Architects–if ever there was a profession that paid attention to details, this is it. Every building we walk in, we’re going to notice things. Every little thing. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall… we’ll find the good, the bad, the ugly, and the criminal. It can’t be helped. No matter how hard we might try, no matter how much we imbibe, we can’t just turn off being an architect. It’s a part of who we are. Sometimes, it’s a blessing to be able to travel around and really appreciate the built environment, other times it most definitely a curse. When we go out with friends and family, it’s not uncommon to remark about things like the lack of accessibility, the bizarre choice of light fixtures, the exposed ductwork, and the location of the pull stations. You’ll correct them for using the wrong words for things we know as frieze, clerestory, and muntins.
Maybe that’s why people think we’re all like Ted Mosby.
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Loft in El Cabañal is a private residence renovated by AMBAU. It is located in Valencia, Spain. Photos by: German Cabo
The project called for a small, one family house as a part of an existing semi-detached house, located in Ljubljana’s 1960s suburbia, in an area covered with a ‘blanket’ of small houses on minuscule plots of land.
The project became an exercise in organisational simplicity of the interior plan: on the ground floor, an insertion of a staircase slightly off-centre into the plan of the small living space effectively divides it into 4 distinct zones: access, kitchen, living/dining area and a workspace. The rooms exist and evolve around the column-like staircase in a simple sequence of different widths that defines them, simultaneously independent and fluidly connected.
Furthermore, a slight submersion of the ground floor surface by 30cm lower from the level of the garden, stresses the idea of ‘separation’ of the living space from the surroundings, creating a sense of intimacy with limited means at hand – this allows for both perpendicular walls of the ground floor to be opened along the entire length of the volume, while preserving the sense of ‘room’ for the interior.
On the upper floor, the staircase divides the attic space into 2 separate tent-like volumes – the parents and the kids room, which both overlook the neighbourhood through elongated, slit windows, lowered to the level of the beds.
The exterior of the house, in contrast to its older neighbour, is clad in black extruded aluminium profiling, reminding one of the black wood-clad buildings of the past. By turning the profiling inside out, a sense of precision of the project is achieved – the thinness of the profiling giving the whole building a sharp, monumental appearance.
Sig Nordal 