R house
The yellow wall is a fixed device that defines boundaries in the flexible way of living the house.
The grey wall is a dynamic device that animates the traditional static use of the internal spaces.
R House is a part of the renovation of a former industrial building.
This real estate development generates a particular kind of residential space with a well defined internal volume, this features are taken as guide lines for the project.
R house is like a terraced house, its internal volume is a long and narrow parallelepiped with only a short face opened to the outside.
The apartment is mostly arranged on a single floor, the internal space is divided in a large living room on the front side and two bedrooms with bathrooms on the back side one upon the other.
The project is made of two single objects: a wall unit and a partition device.
The peculiar dimension of the apartment is taken by the project as a chance to develop a theme for the whole house.
The wall unit is a long constant, shiny yellow, monochromatic, single matter, sign inside the living space. It is a cabinet, a bookshelf, a bench/storage and the kitchen top. The continuous presence of the wall unit emphasizes the length dimension of the house and the unique big internal space.
At the same time the cabinet defines the entrance, the bookshelf and the bench are useful for the living area, and the kitchen top serves the dining space.
The design of the yellow wall suggests the activities inside the house. So in some way it remarks the unique space breaking it into sub-spaces connected to their function.
The partition device is arranged along the short back-side of the house, its purpose is to divide the bedrooms from the living room. It is been designed also to preserve the capability of interaction between all the spaces of the house.
At the ground level two big doors can separate the living room from the service bedroom, at the upper floor two folding panels preserve the shadow and the quiet of the bedroom and once opened they allow the view of the living.
The partition switches the (bad) condition of a single window house into an occasion for the project. By moving the different parts of that, it can either show itself as a unique blind plan or as a dynamic surface.
The partition tries to give back to the house the missing front opened to the outside and the question is: are the bedrooms that look into the living room or the opposite?
The matter of the partition panels underlines this ambiguity, they are made of grey Viroc® that calls to mind an exterior concrete front.
The two objects of the project can be such summarised: the yellow wall is a fixed device that defines boundaries in the flexible way of living the house, the grey wall is a dynamic device that animates the traditional static use of the internal spaces.
