CASTELLDEFELS

Private client.
Concept stage, ongoing.
Calle Coruña, Castelldefels.

The house at Castelldefels has been a lovely little summer home for the owners for many years but, every year they talk of renovating the house to make it suitable for living there all year round.  Built in the 1990’s on simple, raised stone foundations this single storey house has only 50m2 of internal accomodation but benefits from a large garden where most of the hot summer afternoons are spent in the shade of the mulberry tree.

The challenge is to increase the floor area of the house without changing its footprint and without exceeding the height limit set by the local authority.  The goals are to create room for a third bedroom, to increase the size of the kitchen, the bathroom, dining and living spaces and to open up the internal space to the garden on three sides.

A programmatic review of the plan shows us that, if we locate two bedrooms on a new upper floor then we can join together the living room, dining room and kitchen into an open plan space that is linked to the garden on all three sides.  This is made possible by clearly segregating the bathroom, bedroom and storage space from the open plan living space which brings functional clarity to the plan and reinforces the connection with to the exterior.