Extension of a home in Sabadell
Small extension of a worker's house from the beginning of the 20th century in Sabadell (Barcelona). It has the typical configuration between party walls with a plot width of 4 meters. The original situation presents the common transformations of these houses on the facade of the interior patio: the kitchen as a narrow projection, which brings together the bathroom and laundry room, small canopies and roofs that prevent light from entering the interior. In addition, this house had also been transformed by the street façade, since a garage door had been opened.
The property, a young couple, wants to keep the garage on the street front, but improve the space of the dining room + kitchen + living room that overlooks the interior patio. The intervention consists, therefore, in maintaining the existing volumetry of the house in terms of the first floor and roof and expanding the ground floor, depleting the buildable depth of 22 meters, demolishing the irregular volumes of the façade of the interior patio.
The new volumetry is conceived as a rigid box of metal pillars and girders that are embedded in the walls and ceilings. The rigidity is necessary to brace the rear facades horizontally again, a brace lost at the time of demolishing the courtyard volumes. Perceptually, the rigidity disappears inside as the metal structure remains embedded in the masonry and lime walls and in the CLT wood intradoses of the ceiling. This tubular space opens completely to the outside with carpentry flush with the built limits. The perfection of this extension contrasts with the irregularities of the old work, of wooden beams and manual vaults and exposed brick walls. To maintain a reading of the growth by stages of the house, a linear skylight is made right where the old house ends and the new one begins. This skylight is crucial to illuminate the central part of the house. In the flooring, the polished concrete floor is used because it improves the thermal inertia conditions of the new construction and provides a unity between the different parts and phases of the house. On the first floor, this volume of the extension configures a usable terrace from one of the rooms.
