Espai nou a Casa Nova
The project for Sa Casa Nova in Lloret works with time. It reconnects the existing linear time through new cyclic times. It works in an intervention that understands that agreements are always conflicting; that there must be turning back. The previous state of the house showed the trace of the three times that had been formed it: the original construction of the country house in 1840, the later division into three separate properties and the 60s reform for agricultural use. To these three cumulative times, not dialoguing and even contradictory, the project superimposes a new one: a rehabilitation for rural rental housing with a budget of just under 150 € / m2. The aim of the project is to synchronize all previous times through the new one. To do it, an intervention strategy in two phases is defined. It is a single tactical move, which leaves behind two new luxuries: space and views.
The first phase involves the demolition of multiple 60s compartmentalization, so that the original dimension of space is recovered under an inclined wooden structure between 4 and 5 meters high. The finishing differences between the various interventions that there was so far are tinged with a new layer of common, white painting. The first luxury is the volume of space. Then, and in a second phase, the object that shapes the program demands is inserted: a bathroom and storage space inside the house. The new object will be able to order the space around it and give it a domestic scale. This new object is located in the center of the liberated and conditioned space. It stands out radically from the place that shelters it, because of its structural condition, but also its material or performance. The new object is constructed with an extremely austere materiality. It is a simple structure of pine wood frames whose internal divisions (floor and ceiling) are built with varnished OSB boards. In its exterior it aims to get linked to the imaginary of the Majorcan rural housing, so it is coated with a llengües red fabric.
The object, in their eagerness to synchronize times, recovers the original floor level of the construction of 1840 that the reform of the 60 had changed, lowering it. In this way it ensures that, through use, the interior of the new space rediscovers the house views over the mountains of the World Heritage Site of Serra de Tramuntana, and incorporates it into the daily life of the house.
The second luxury is the reconnection with the distant landscape. The construction of this new space in Sa Casa Nova is controversial: lightweight, prefabricated and reversible in any case, compared to the existing values: heavy, in situ and static. The project offers a sensitive interior space through which a large volume of air around it is ordered; a way linked to the local imaginary. It offers itself to be inhabited just as long as it is useful or necessary. At the time that their time has passed, the object will not be a conflict, simply disappear giving way to a new state for space, as permanent as the one our project proposed.
