7+4 Self-Built dwellings
Implicit in a self-build are a series of characteristics that determine the architectural proposal, such as the adoption of a single type of dwelling with a programme of minimum seventy useful metres square per unit and executed by the future owners, who have little building knowledge. This condition determined the choice of the execution systems, as load bearing walls were designed arranged in two centerlines running parallel to the façade, which were unequal owing to the layout of the interior spaces.
Situated in a growth area of Castilblanco de los Arroyos, the plot is on the limit of the urban fabric and along its longitudinal axis, with the amplitude of the northern sierra of Seville. The urban grid where the plot is located was earmarked for family and terraced houses, something that entails a hostile relationship and no possibility of dialogue with the neighbouring constructions. The condition of formalizing the limit of the city, opening up to the landscape of the sierra and making the actual dwelling look inwards while individualizing the visions of each one of them, determines the volumetric aspect of the project.
The only vehicle access to the plot is on the north façade, with a pedestrian path by the south façade to connect it with the landscape. There is an unevenness between both streets that varies along the eleven dwellings, which have been developed in two groups of four and seven unit, between which there is an intermediate space whose use is yet to be determinated by the town hall of this municipality.
The dwellings, marked by the unevenness that exists between the front and back borders, are resolved in the project in a unitary manner through the definition of a single level for the forgings of the two groups of dwellings into which the operation is divided, absorbing the unevenness with staircases of different outline in each suite of dwellings.
Paradoxically the south façade, with greater links to the urban reality, has a hermetic character, as only the entrance has been cut in it and it has been pierced by a perforation in the upper floor in order to emphasise its solid sensation.
The north façade, however, is a part of a privileged environment and is resolved around a courtyard made private by the actual rooms, which shape something like an outdoor “double height” space.
The two floors boast a courtyard and terrace, both with a powerful spatial character and delimited as if they were rooms to thus emphasise their domestic character. It was planned that part of the terrace space on the upper floor could in future be extended. It will be up for the owners of the dwellings to finish designing them…
