THE ARTIST'S HOUSE (or "The rose of water")
This is a purpose for the end-of-year project for Interior Design's 2-year course.
The project consisted on setting up a big local of 120m² (used until then as some kind of warehouse) for giving it a residential use. As well, the future users would be a family composed by 2 children of different genders and a couple, one of which an artist who would work at home. The total free-height of 5,70m let us build the second floor we needed, as we wanted to have space for living and for working both.
This project is hypothethically located in Sants district of Barcelona (Spain).
The entrance of a house must be in, some way, the cover letter of its owner. It shoud be a sample of all that is lived inside it and some sensations that are going to walk with you while you're on its indoors. In this case, it could say: "Hey, you are on THIS artist's house, so you're playing with new rules".
Here's some examples of the process of selecting wallpapers and compositions for the opening piece:
Going on, we have the sitting room, with its big modular sofa, and the rounded dinning table and chairs, designed by local companies. An opened and absolutely flexible space.
Next, we have the kitchen, with its own character but mantaining the palette of neutral colours of the previous space, which now frame the pictorical or sculptorical elements (furniture, lightning, facings...). It wants to be completely functional, over the "pop" aesthetic it has, which gives it a fresh and contemporary style.
Connected to the kitchen we have a "constructed cube" that contains and concetrates sanitary installations, with 3 uses: on one side, looking to the kitchen, a laundry cabinet with its electrical appliances and storage space hidden behind dark glasses; on the middle and between walls, the main bathroom (with accessible planning); finally, on the other side opposed to the laundry cabinet, 2 sinks thought in correlation with the artist's study, following on the circulation, and also hidden by a big sliding wooden door.
From these views, can be seen an isolated sitting room focused on reading on activities that require tranquility. At the end, the corridor that brings to the working room is used as a transition place between living and working, not only functional but also acoustic division and a perfect place for the book storage, as it's under the glass block floor of the tiny terrace of the main bedroom, so it takes profit of solar light on midday hours.
Below you can see an overview of the plants and distribuition.
Following, you can see the upper level with a common space, for storing, playing or other activities communicated with the children's bedroom. Now it is all a free space, but distances are calculated so it can be refurbished and moved to create two independent rooms (one parallel to the stairs and the other where's right on plans now). When the provable restoring, the space of the floor with the grid that indicates glass blocks would delimit the area that should be set free for circulation through the floor.
Going on, another bathroom overlapped to the other of the ground floor divides the two rooms for functionalism of distribuition and creation of acoustic privacy.
Next, you can see some sections of both floors and so the physical, visual and luminical communication between them.
LAST POINT.
All the dwelling, from distribuition to materials and openings (as windows or skylights), is thought to correspond to the geographical and ambiental placing of the building, as well as taking care of the buildings that surround it, so it works matching the mediterranean climate to take advantatge of it's temperature and solar hours trying to be the most efficient it can be, looking also for local materials and furnishing elements, so it isn't only good for itself and its owners but also for its environment and local economy.
Physical openings are thought not only for sanitary reasons but also with the intention of breaking the common tendency of this urban district of long-and-thin (and dark) flats, with the play of lights, breaking the horitzontal inclination and creating vertical (visual) directions which create a sensation of space dis-condensation, so people living inside feels less closed inside.
