Casa Guzman | PLANTEA

The commission consisted of the complete renovation of a traditional house on the seafront of Santoña,Spain, to adapt it to the way of life and needs of the descendants of the original owners.
The original house, of value, had to accommodate the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Vicente and Marina, four families, in spaces suited to modern-day living without modifying the external volumetry, protected by the town's urban plan. And to do so without losing its character, its essence, trying to keep alive the memory of the grandparents and the time spent in childhood.
The interior has been completely redistrubuted. The original house was divided into small rooms, each with its own function, prepared for a conventional family situation and a life dedicated to work. The ground floor opens up as much as the structure of the house allows, arranging in continuous spaces the kitchen, the dining room, a living room with a fireplace on the south façade and a larger living room designed for reading, cinema or play on the north façade. The character is determined by the traditional clay tile flooring (Ferrés) in a 13x13 format, which unifies all the rooms and recalls the original flooring of the house, and the chestnut wood with which the kitchen, the cupboards and the dining table have been made to measure.
The chairs, a model in wood and natural bulrush produced in Spain in the 1960s, are selected from Fargo Furniture, while the lamps on the table, in stitched cardboard, are a design by Gabriel Ordeix for Santa y Cole from 1983.
The lacquered sheet metal fireplace, the MM model by Miguel Milá for DAE, is placed next to the staircase and facing the garden, forming the most peaceful and intimate living area.
The sofas are also custom-made and upholstered in natural linen. In the cinema and games room, the sofa spans a complete corner, creating a secluded reading area by one of the windows, elevated and away from the 'noise' of the house.
Upstairs the bedrooms and toilets have been rearranged, with three double rooms and a large bedroom that can accommodate up to six children at a time, for a total of twelve people.
On this floor the character is defined by the painted pine floor and the ceiling of the same floor in its natural aspect. The whites of the walls, the floor, the curtains, the beds... dominate the ambience, complemented only by some coral marble details. In the toilets, the red tile of the ground floor is combined with a glazed tile in the same colour (Ferrés). The washbasins, recovered or made to measure. Few elements, wooden benches, canvas chairs, wall lights and naked lamps by Zangra or Frama, complete the architecture, simple but detailed.
The exterior appearance has been preserved intact, renewing the original woodwork and paintwork. Only one element has been added, a pergola adjacent to the living room in front of the garden, which proposes an 'outdoor room', an intermediate place between the house and nature. It is made up of six white-painted masonry pillars, in continuity with the façade of the house, and a framework of metal profiles painted in the red already present in other elements. Wisteria, bougainvillea and climbing jasmine are planted, which over time will cover the structure and definitively configure this room protected from the sun next to the garden.
It is furnished with a light table by Fermob, wooden and striped canvas director chairs by Lona, and locally made upholstered seats.
The project finds advice in the work of Coderch or Vazquez Molezún, with a clear but not rigid order, on the scale of the inhabitant to offer places and not spaces, with simple materials and basic construction. The red of the clay and metal, the pine and chestnut, are reminiscent both of Cantabrian or Basque farmhouses, with their French air, and of the Mediterranean holiday home. And it does not fail to look to northern Europe, in search of abstraction and austerity in the face of nature.
The aim was to build a calm place for rest and family life, in balance between the architecture in which we have grown up, the one that connects us with the permanent, and the one that makes us look forward with freshness, without disguise, oblivious to the transient.

Lead Architects: Luis Gil, Lorenzo Gil, Carla Morán

Photography: Germán Saiz

Website: https://germansaiz.es/