Not so many jobs begin like this one, with an owners’ list of wishes and hopes for their new home. A list much closer to the principles and values architects usually work with, often secretly, than the ordinary expectations of those couples facing this unknown challenge.

The plot, located in a residential area, had enough good attributes to become the main line of the project. One of the first goals was to achieve a close and essential relationship between the house and the garden so that they both became the extension of each other. All this without falling into the unavoidable large glazed panels. A house with walls in a garden for a couple of art collectors.

The proposal searches for the balance between placing the maximum number of rooms on the ground floor yet keeping the garden free from masonry work volumes. This idea is developed through a volumetric composition shaped in three boxes spread throughout the garden, almost aligned and located in the plot’s northern side creating a wide outer zone facing south. The first box, to the east, houses the children’s area with three single bedrooms upstairs and a playroom on the ground floor. The second one, in the center, accommodates the main room: the kitchen, almost 30 m² and 4 m high and dominated by a fireplace. The third box, to the west, contains the parents’ zone, with the bedroom at the garden level and a high ceiling studio on the first floor.

The spaces created between the three boxes are covered sheltering two different environments, open to the garden in north-south direction, closed with big folding windows. These spaces offer a very different atmosphere, more related to the garden than to the house.

About volumes, the house consists of three brick masonry cubes of different heights set parallel to the back street. Despite having windows of several dimensions depending on their function, the cubes are predominantly massive. Besides, the interstitial areas between cubes, covered by a concrete slab and framed by folding wooden glass doors, are essentially ethereal. Actually, the space becomes an open porch when windows are folded back.

The house is built on double face brick load-bearing walls, using red masonry for the outer face while painted white inside. The frames are wooden with roller blinds as sunscreen when required. The house is conditioned with a geothermal heat pump and an underfloor heating system that slightly refreshes the house during summer, avoiding an air conditioned system to dehumidify.