Casa SV
Barcelona
2019
Residential
Connecting with nature in an urban environment
The house is located in an unbeatable urban environment, adjacent to the Collserola Park forest and with incomparable views of the city of Barcelona. It’s a privileged place to build this house, enjoying the advantages of the city as well as those of a house in the country. The project incorporates traditional production methods and energetically passive solutions, taking advantage of local resources and materials to generate an authentic, pleasant space related to outdoor spaces.
The house is distributed on three levels. On the ground floor are the common areas, the living room, the kitchen, and the dining room. The service area with independent access from the ground floor is located in the basement, along with the guest bedroom, a multipurpose room, bathrooms with access to the garden, and the garage. On the upper floor are the children’s bedrooms sharing bathrooms, a library in the largest modules and a suite at the opposite end.
The spaces of the house are open to the outside. On the façade, the perpendicular walls and planters cross the limits. A relationship is established between the interior and the external areas, blurring the limits and reinforcing the connection with the overhang of the large cantilever on the southern façade. The exterior elements participate in the internal order of the project.
All the elements have been specially designed with the utmost attention to detail on all scales, from the construction system to the furniture. The handmade bricks at a local factory were produced by master craftsmen and designed especially for that project. The dimensions of the brick determine the size of the spaces and the module of the metal frames of the steel structure that rest on the brick walls. This metal grid modulates the project elastically according to the needs and the desired limits. Therefore, it’s a flexible systematization that gives an implicit order to the entire project. The beams, made of solid oak, were selected and sawn by a local sawmill and left to dry in the sun for three months to stabilize their movements. Once manipulated, specific points were made to flush them into the metal profiles. These elements are part of the structural and aesthetic system, with interesting textures and finishes both in interior and exterior spaces.
It’s a genuine project, designed and thought to satisfy the wishes of a family. Each leaf, each material, each color, each reflection, each smell, each sound… must seduce us. It’s a place for the enjoyment of the senses, a house to be lived in happiness, as well as a place for personal and family privacy.
