Spectacularly slim

The town of Granollers is part of the Barcelona metropolitan area and has the typical Spanish city block structure in the centre. In this project, a plot of land just 4.80 m wide cut through a complete block oriented east-west. What's more, there was an additional challenge in that the neighbouring building to the south uses the full permitted height of just under 15 metres and therefore blocks out the sunlight for much of the day. Yet the planners found the perfect solution. They developed a living environment with a special vertical and horizontal layout, transforming a thankless starting position into a unique selling point. Entering from the street brings you into a living area which is almost ecclesiastical in style. At 14.60 m high, it makes full use of the building’s height limits and captures sunlight through large skylights – without being affected by neighbouring buildings. 

The second part of the sequence of rooms follows on directly from the living room. In the rest of the house, four individual rooms are stacked on top of each other like a tower. From a kitchen and dining area on the ground floor, the stairs lead up to three bedrooms, with the master bedroom on the first floor, a children’s bedroom on the second and finally a guest room at the top. The clever trick here is that by having just one room on each floor, there are two sources of daylight in each room, one from the tower-like living room and another from windows or small balconies to the rear. The next part of the sequence is an internal patio courtyard, followed by another part of the building. Erecting this auxiliary building on the land was possible thanks to the usage rules, which the planners gladly took advantage of. This resulted in an additional, separate multi-purpose room, which also serves as the passageway to the rearmost area: the garden.

The project also shows its unique character in the construction materials used. The building shell, external walls and entire tower-like living room are built exclusively of red ceramic bricks, ensuring structural stability and helping to control the climate inside. The internal structures, from the partition walls to the stairs and built-in furniture, are made of CLT. The consistent duality of the materials is complemented by visible fittings installed on the walls, which are stylishly highlighted with switches and socket outlets from the Gira E2 surface-mounted design line. With this house, the architects have shown, in impressive fashion, that with good ideas and by focusing exclusively on the essentials, dream houses can be created even in the most adverse conditions.