Casa Juramento
Extra space as opportunity for evocation.
A small apartment midway down the hall in a horizontal property must double its sq. meters to become a home/office for a young couple who also work together as graphic designers.
With a low budget, the maximizing operations are; to complete the volume by means of a light, transparent structure which encloses the entry patio and becomes the roof of the bedroom, as well as the colonization of the terraces via a simple tile flooring, the result is more than enough meters than initially requested.
Because of the shape of the original construction and its position, the apartment does not have many long perspectives. This situation took us to create two landscape pieces which we positioned within the surplus of meters we had, an olive tree and a glass screen, their objective is help the maximization process by means of evocating other places. On the ground floor, the olive tree visually articulates the rooms surrounding it as it accompanies the owners while they go up the stairs, the stone floor and walls are trying to work with the tree in order to create a certain Mediterranean view for the kitchen and living area, as most of the day light enters through the glass roof.
On the mezzanine is the studio, previously a home workshop, which was opened by positioning a sequence of double structural pillars so to gain a 180 degrees view, the studio, where the couple spends most of their days, has a privileged perspective of the enclosed patio, a close connection with the evening terrace, and a direct relationship to our second articulating landscape piece. A glass screen that functions as a veil for the bedroom trying to emulate, in look and in meaning, a traditional Japanese shoji screen. Behind it, in the first level of the house and hiding itself from the social areas, is the bedroom, where the closet space is transformed into a big mirror that amplifies the space and, aided by a game of opacities and transparencies, projects it towards the terraces.
The project has two terraces, one to be used as a relaxing area and a second one, on top of the studio, to work as a meditation area, the house than becomes a sort of round plan, always maintaining a relationship between its balconing areas, and creating a view master sensation and feeling of extra space.
