Studio Banana TV interviews Bach architects, authors of a minimum-budget house in Gaüses, Girona, Spain.
On a long narrow plot where a house already stands, it was proposed to build a small dwelling that could be used as a painting studio and as an occasional weekend refuge for the owners’ children.
The budget was the starting point for the project; it had to be economically viable with a minimal budget (70,000 €).
This factor limited the options for both the structural elements and the finishes, so the project started with a very clear premise: it had to be done working with the local construction industry (if possible from the same village) and using the technical solutions they were accustomed to; traditional solutions adopted in the typical constructions of the area.
This premise led us to work with load-bearing walls, one-way floor slabs, aluminum windows of reasonable dimensions and conventional finishes, such as painted render walls.
From there, the studio-dwelling of roughly 90 m2 in size was divided into two well-differentiated areas: a large clear space that opens onto the outside through a reed covered porch, and a more private space, with two rooms and a small bathroom. The whole program was fit within a perimeter of load-bearing walls with a span of slightly over six meters.
The clear space contains the living room, dining room and kitchen. This space was designed to maximize its area over the total area so that the heart of the house, the space where most of its functions are carried out, would be as pleasant as possible. The rooms, in contrast, are understood as basic spaces, with the minimum space necessary for sleeping and to have a small table.
The bathroom and the kitchen are reduced to the essential; the bathroom also contains the space for the washing machine and the hot water heater and the kitchen is a minimal built-in counter in the living room.
Local regulations required the house to have a sloped roof, so it was proposed as an interplay of pitches that would remind one of the profile of the mountains on the horizon. These pitches are applied to both the main building and the reed covered porch surrounding the northeastern and southeastern façades, which results in a formal continuity between the main building and the porch.
Because the roof is exposed to intense sunlight during the summer months, the roof’s pitch is taken advantage of to generate a flow of air within a ventilated chamber in the manner of the traditional roof of Barcelona’s Ensanche neighborhood: a second roof of uralite panels is raised above the main roof generating an air chamber of 30 cm. This chamber takes advantage of the slope of the building to allow air to enter through perforations made in the façade in the lowest part of the roof and to exit through the highest part. In this way, the air in the chamber heated by the sunlight, rises and exits through the higher perforations, drawing cooler air through the lower ones.
The slope of the roof is also taken advantage of to collect the rainwater from its surface, which is channeled to the center of the building and expelled through a large drainpipe into a water tank on the ground. This tank is connected to the adjacent vegetable garden, which is able to function entirely with the retrieved rainwater.
The two façades of the house under the porch are painted with green and white vertical stripes, so that the shadows of the reed create an interplay of textures that vary with the changing positions of the sun over the day. This was not only a formal solution that would help to integrate the building into the surrounding greenery, but also a response to the type of façade finish we were obliged to use by the budget. The mortar render laid over the brick wall cracks easily and absorbs very poorly any movements of the facade, so it is nearly impossible to prevent the appearance of fissures and cracks. When this type of façade is painted uniformly, the cracks are the only design on the surface and so are painfully evident. If we superimpose a high contrast motif, such as the bar code of green and white stripes used in this case, the difference in intensity causes the cracks to be less evident and to be disguised by the main motif.
So, the green and white vertical stripes, in addition to helping to give the building a more durable appearance, cause the façades to change their appearance depending on the sun’s angle over the reed porch and the shadows cast on the building, integrating it into the forest that starts at this point of the lot, while at the same time symbolizing the low price of the dwelling.
The rest of the façades, which face the dense forest surrounding the house, are painted the same color green as the stripes, so that in the early morning and late afternoon the ground-level sun projects the shadows of the trees on them, mimicking the different shade of green of the adjacent forest.
The reed porch surrounding the main façades of the building is formed by a light metal structure of square section tubes, using T- or L-profiles according to their position. The reed is supported and tied through tensed cables and cable ties with a very simple installation that allows the owner to replace the reed approximately every two years since this material obviously has a limited life. Its very low price (120€ for the whole building) makes its replacement affordable.
The unusual feature of the house is found in the living room; it is an opening situated in a corner, with a system of lacquered aluminum sliding doors that do not leave a vertical post when they are open, giving the sensation from inside the house that the living room extends out to the porch and the outer garden.
To achieve this empty corner, the structure of the load-bearing walls is interrupted at this point by a steel beam in the corner which supports the wall above the opening. To reduce the span of this metal structure, a circular metal pillar was added which coincides with and is the same color as the aluminum joinery, causing it to almost disappear and giving the sensation that corner is floating.
This is a very simple operation that allows the shell of the building to breathe and to open on one of its corners, where one can enjoy splendid views of the village of Gaüses and the mountains on the horizon.
