A&M House | JSJ ARQUITECTOS

In 2019, a young couple asked us to design a project for their house in an existing one. The house, over 100 years old, was in poor condition and the client's first proposal was to demolish it and build a new one from scratch. However, after visiting the building we realized that, although it was in poor condition, it had a lot of architectural potential, and we managed to convince the client to propose a project preserving the existing house.

Built with masonry and brick walls, and wooden beams, the house had the typical distribution of the time: the space was divided into numerous rooms without natural light. Over time, the house had suffered significant deterioration, especially in the wooden elements affected by humidity and insects.

The objective of the project was to preserve the essence of the existing traditional construction without refusing to the spaciousness, natural light and energy efficiency of a modern construction. To achieve this, a new volume was added to the interior façade, which protected the existing building and allowed to unveil the traditional masonry façade previously covered with mortar, now inside the house. The house was united both horizontally and vertically by opening double heights that connected the three floors with each other.

Construction was carried out through meticulous renovation work: removal of mortar on the existing masonry and brick walls, reinforcement of wooden structure in slabs and the complete reassembly of the roof to insulate below the existing tiles and renovate its wooden structure.