In the 50s, in Spain there was a process of urbanization of the Mediterranean coast. It built infrastructure, hotels and housing for summer holiday. This small penthouse is located in one of these macro-developments, called ‘Finca Adoc’: a complex about 2,000 homes developed in 1960, in the Alicante coast.
In this complex, we can find a railway, car parkings, numerous shops, heated pool and differents footbridges, stairways and elevators, designed to conect the various levels of the buildings to the beach, port and sea. All this constructions with ans advanced engineering solutions for the time, due to the steep slopes between the sea and the Serra Grossa.
Nowadays, in Spain no more homes are built. However, it exits a process of rehabilitation of existing buildings. We are watching how the holiday apartments, many of them near of the sea, are becoming homes of continuous use, or how the summer developments being linked to the city by public transport infrastructure, such as the TRAM in this area. The contemporary Mediterranean city loses its limits, and it draws new boundaries parallel to the sea.
In this cse, the context is very important when you are thinking about the rehabilitation of this penthouse, located in a rationalist building near of Albufereta beach. The spectacular views over the Mediterranean Sea and the city of Alicante let us think the project as an interface between the inside and the outside, like a big trasparent window.
The old apartment had a rigid structure of small spaces. Now it becomes a flexible house, where the costumer needs can be intetrated. This is achieved through: the extension of the interior space, the union of kitchen and living room, big rooms with mobile partitions, and the expansion of storage spaces.
Along with transparency and flexibility, building automation allows spaces reschedule. Intelligent hygrothermal conditioning systems, mattresses high acoustic absorption, lighting scenes, the sound system ... allow housing to change and adapt to different uses and occupations.
Our goal was to create a home for a young couple, a penthouse where live inside the sea, to live with the light from the coast. Somehow, we try to allow light, glare, glare, haze, clouds, wind, waves ... amend the emotional experience of housing.
