Page 103 - AIT0322_E-Paper

Entwurf • Design Raúl Sánchez Architects, ES-Barcelona
Bauherr • Client Privat
Standort • Location ES-Viladecans
Nutzfläche • Floor space 110 m 2
Fotos • Photos José Hevia, ES-Barcelona
Mehr Infos auf Seite • More info on page 134

MAGIC BOX APARTMENT

IN VILADECANS

Three generation revival: with his wife and daughters,
the client moves back into his parents’ house, into the
newly renovated ground floor where his grandparents
lived when he himself was still a child. Raúl Sánchez Ar-
chitects have given the traditional form of living a new
lease of life with a clear room layout, a reduced canon of
forms, colours, mirrored surfaces and a “magic box”

T he architect’s heart leaped for joy when during the conversion a
capped ceiling became visible. Since the ceiling structure was un-
covered, the 110-square-metre ground floor not only has a clear height
of over three metres, but also an honest interior. Raúl Sánchez meticu-
lously oversaw the work in the two-storey corner building built in 1917
in Viladecans, an industrial town located near the Catalan capital. The
upper floor occupied by the grandparents remained untouched. All the
rooms are laid out along an existing structural wall that divides the floor
plan longitudinally: into entrance hall, hallway and kitchen on the west
side and into bathrooms, living rooms, bedrooms and children’s rooms
on the east side. New and special are the spatial continuum and the cir-
culation of the rooms in the eastern half: the rooms communicate with
their own doors with the access area and the kitchen-dining room, but
are also connected with each other via alternative doors. This increases
the spatial experience and the interior complexity of the house. In the
children’s room, a 210-centimetre-high golden “Magic Box” – the high-
light and eponym of the design – divides the room into two separate
zones for the five- and seven-year-old daughters. Hidden behind the
shiny brass cladding are four cabinets which, arranged in pairs, form a
central passageway - a kind of secret tunnel! Plenty of space, then, for
the girls’ clothes and imagination. Sánchez already made effective use
of the shimmering sheet metal as a box-shaped cladding for the sup-
ports when he converted his own flat, Residence 0110. Yet this walk-in
wardrobe of a different kind has even more to offer than just an in-
crease in spatial and material complexity: the allegory of sibling love,
when opening the oversized casket reveals the greatest treasure in the
form of the sister! Sound and light continue their course through the
metre-high opening between the upper edge of the room divider and
the barrel ceiling. Thus, despite the visual separation, conversations are
still possible and the diffuse grazing light provides an unhindered atmo-
spheric shadow cast along the flat barrel vaults. A private yet intercon-
Grundriss • Floor plan nected sphere that conveys closeness and security to the children.

AIT 3.2022 • 103