House for an artist | Castroferro Arquitectos

Alejandra is a sculptor who decided to unite her whole world in a small house. A house located in those areas that cities forget to digest. Built, like all its peers, at the stroke of desire and ingenuity, generating a set made from remnants, the remnants that were necessary at every moment.

Living in the same space that you work in, always involves a reflection on the physical relationship between both places, on how much they intoxicate each other. This project focuses on, starting from a base house, that architecture helps emotionally and physically separate the two places.

A ground floor and basement for work and a top floor to rest. The work area is treated as literally as possible, all the facilities on the upper floor are exposed, the structure of the wooden floor with its pinewood beams that had to be correctly reinforced, as well as all the original walls with its multiple constructive patches. The house was made like this and will continue to be built like this, adding layers.

To give the necessary background to a workplace where sculptural creation should be the one that has the center of intensity, it was decided to abstract all that material base through a layer of white that, keeping an eye on material traces, achieves evade the fund to highlight Alejandra's sculptural work.

 The sculptor also wanted to merge her workplace, where the evidence, the errors, the dirt, the process, were seen ... with a small exhibition area for those visitors who come. A small exhibition staircase made of concrete and the recycled beams in the house serve to display these works as an art gallery. The artist's house takes place detached from the floor, below is the work with an abstract and massive image with stone and polished concrete on the floor. Housing will be something else.

The first thing is that the space is not similar. It was decided to remove the existing slab in order to enjoy all the volume.

The fragile existing trusses of tea pine are reinforced with a new banner and two studs of laminated fir attached to the existing truss with metal fixing plates that are shown continuing with the honesty of this continuous build based on layers of use that always defined the architecture of this type of housing.

The existing floor is maintained only by inserting a 240x120 cm spruce plywood panel on the old and damaged board. that increases its presence thanks to that generous cutting.

 
A minimal intervention with a beam and two right feet of laminated wood make the primary structure of the bedroom area complete with laminated fir joists and, again, the plywood piece as a final board in the floor and lower part of bedroom ceiling.

The spruce plywood floor board is a perfect antonym to the polished concrete in the work area.This upper space is deliberately treated as a contrast to the lower stone materiality, solving with warm tones wood all the new performance that reflects the duty of rest