FROM OPEN GARDEN TO JARDIN CLOS
The housing development built by the Americans in the fifties on part of the pine forest that covers Rota’s beach, meets very Anglo-Saxon premises in terms of the understanding about how to inhabit a place: a close development with just one loop street giving access to a cluster of detached houses, which modest fences allow the view to their generous exterior spaces. Placed at the plot’s centre, the houses respect the wonderful pine specimens that shape the forest mass of a deep-rooted British open garden.
There are two main reasons why building a new house was needed: first, because the original one had not enough space for a family with three grown children; second, because the dwellers’ way of life demands maximum privacy. It was needed to go from the open garden to the closed one, an opposite concept which take us to the intimate customs of the Andalusian manor houses.
Nevertheless, the original house keeps a series of valuable virtues. The most remarkable are its impeccable orientation and the size and relation between the rooms, all of them are concentrated around the fireplace in the living room.
That was the leitmotiv of the project, its starting point: incorporating the values of the former house to the new one, using what was built, the volumes offered by its rooms and the openings that used to be windows and doors. Rooms have turned into courtyards, and around them, new rooms have been placed. The concept was clear. In this case, more than a ‘’new project’’, it was better to make a ‘’project part two’’. (Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas, 2015)
