The matrix proposed orders the typology and the building as a whole around a courtyard, breaking with the problems generated by the given typology – of great depth and square plan – and configuring houses with cross ventilation, good lighting, with non-hierarchical rooms and with a great constructive rationality. An orderly structure of pillars, concrete girders and collaborative slabs that promote fast and economical construction.
Concept
The project consists of the construction of 24 homes in the municipality of Igualada. The project is defined by a compact volume, with a square plan, present in a strip of parks that generates a transition between a newly built area based on row houses, with cross ventilation and private terraces, and the industrial environment of the historic centre Township.
The volume is staggered in section, adapting to the natural slope of the land to ensure good sunlight in the patio-garden. On the ground floor there are common services and three well-oriented houses with direct access from the central patio. It is also possible to locate the parking reducing the land movement, therefore, the cost and the environmental impact decreases.
Access to the houses is made through walkways located in the central courtyard open to the outside, generating small appropriable spaces. Through the strategic interposition of the vertical cores (stairs and elevators) and the voids between the houses and the walkway, the balance is ensured to achieve cross ventilation, lighting and privacy both in the courtyard and in the houses.
Given the proposed matrix, the homes that are achieved are flexible and adaptable through cabinets that act as both compartmentalization and filter between rooms. The central location of the patio, means that all the houses have crossed views, cross ventilation and a south-facing terrace-gallery, open around the central patio or outside depending on their location on the ground. This gallery generates an intermediate space, a terrace-gallery with flexible functionality, as a complement to the living room or bedroom, well oriented to the south and that serves as a climate mattress.
Constructive rationality, carried out through the control of the envelope – eliminating thermal bridges – and the use of passive climate and ventilation mechanisms – intermediate spaces such as terraces-gallery and open central patio-, added to active mechanisms of energy production, they ensure a climate comfort and a minimization of the use of resources that make that the building can achieve an almost zero consumption (nZEB).
