Independent single family home - Arq(i)Tec

Interior Design

The project we are going to present is an independent single family home, conceived as a primary residence, with a broad program. It is located in a quiet town close to the city of Girona that due to its small size offers a high quality of life.

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The order stems from the willingness of the owners to create a common place that is able to meet their needs. To that end, it is important to create independant spaces and that the house be able to accommodate a large number of people at specific times.

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The solar study, its orientation and the existing view in the southern slope caused ARQ.TEC Surís i Associats to consider an L-shape construction, which allows the owners to enjoy the sights and the garden, at the same time creating intimacy with respect to the neighbors.

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In relation to the formal aspect of the construction, the owners did not want to break the dominant aesthetic parameters of the building and wanted to integrated in to the landscape. This was achieved using materials such as stone and tile, which are very common in the area. With this approach they created clean prismatic volumes which embrace the large sloping tile deck. The same, which defines the living-dining room in double height, and which extends creating a porch overlooking the pool and the garden.

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To make the socket of the prismatic volumes, stone from the area was used with a ” dry” placement type creating a union of the house and the terrain. From a certain level, the volumes emerge in a focus of fine mortar with an intense ochre color finish.

As far as the interior space, it is articulated through an area of double height of an inclined deck. At the highest part we find the library, which opens as a lookout in to the living room and pool. The lighting emerges through a longitudinal skylight that appears thanks to a pair of two heights on the cover of this space. This library-balcony leads to the reading area where a more stable light commands, entering from the north.

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The living-dining room is the large central space in the house, with a great deal of openness to the pool and the garden. This is reinforced by the continuing roof and the pavement that continue to the porch, reaching just to the edge of the pool and making the reflections of the water, felt in the living room.

Through the furniture several different spaces are created in this area, which allow each member of the family to use them independently.

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In the space which closes living room to the east, the kitchen in located as a workplace and meeting place for small groups. It opens to the garden and especially to the barbecue area with which it maintains a close relationship.

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The west wing of the house is composed of bebrooms, which can be closed at any given time.

The staircase that leads from the lounge to the library, also leads to the owners bedroom suite.

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This room has been design for the most part open to the exterior due to the extraordinary landscape that doninates from the south, having access to the terrace-solarium finished in IPE wood. The room incorporates as part of the furniture a shower, bathtub and sink which are considered attractive design elements, worthy of forming part of the room. All these elements are made with intense black granite and wood.

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As a final summary, we can say that the project was carried out with the least number of different materials to give uniformity to the finishes. As pavement, a compact stoneware with a rustic finishing was used throughout the house, except in some areas where iroko floating parquet was installed.

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The house is plastered and painted for the most part, except for those areas that are coated with maple wood, as well as all the indoor woodwork.

For the exterior closings an aluminum with thermic closings in a dark graphite color was used.

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The garden was designed as a large clean space that surrounds the pool leaving it well defined by a floating pavement treated with IPE, creating an optical illusion of a beach around a sheet of water.