The firm MAAV, headed by Guillermo Avanzini Alcibar (Bilbao, 1989) and Adrián Martínez Muñoz (Seville, 1989) has refurbished an abandoned farming-equipment storehouse in Ojacastro and turned it into a dwelling. With just 40 square meters of space within it and an execution budged of 83,000 euros, the wooden cottage was thought of as a livable piece of furniture taking up the plot delimited by existing stone walls. A single room incorporates foldable furnishing and a pull-down bed. The cooker and other electrical appliances also disappear into thick walls, as does storage. The roof’s frame was in a very bad state, so it was replaced with another fishbone structure of laminated timber beams.

The intervention involved consolidating the old stone walls and saving the original tiles of the tiny construction, maintaining the local morphology instead of raising the three-floor building originally envisioned, which did not respect the scale of the Riojan village. The sensitivity of the owners and the municipal council’s readiness to approve the project have together halted the degradation and ultimate destruction of this corner of town.

Fotos cortesía de MAAV