Casa l’Abril | Rob Dubois

Casa Martí – Fernàndez is located in the village of Santa Maria de Palautordera, on the outskirts of Barcelona and on the foothills of the Montseny massif. It is a house that is arranged in just one floor with an eye towards a distant future when the mobility of the actual and still young inhabitants could be limited. It is a single-family house that is organized around several courtyards with different degrees of privacy to make the most of the modest plot.

The construction seeks to form part of its environment, create an indissoluble union with it and where the courtyards will be a natural extension of the interior spaces and where the transition from inside to outside occurs gradually and without obstacles. This indoor/outdoor transition is accompanied by long concrete overhangs that create outdoor spaces protected against the inclement weather of winter or summer, to be able to prolong outdoor stays almost all year round.

Conceptually the house is organized through the creation of three interspersed rectangular volumes, each oriented towards its own courtyard. Each volume has a specific function: the first one is occupied with service functions, the second one houses the common rooms such as the dining room and the living room; and in the third one we find the bedrooms of the family members.

The materialization of the construction is based on accentuating the horizontality of the whole, marking the horizontal joints of the masonry and minimizing the vertical joints. A sober range of colors is applied to the exterior of the whole based on the tones of the travertine of the outer pavement to obtain a contemplative and evidently Mediterranean environment.

Constructor: Construccions Tejera

Technical architect: Jaume Puig