Dwellings at Barcelona

Our approach to the project was to work from inside out, carefully considering the spatial qualities and adjacencies of the interior spaces. Thick boundaries between interior and exterior act as small-scale buffers or ‘almost-rooms’, providing the dwelling with a richer variety of spaces of different scale and character.
A small sun-room in the living room provides passive solar heat gain in the winter. In the summer, when the sun is high up, it becomes a balcony when opening the exterior glass louvres and closing the interior folding glass doors. 
Entry from the street to the apartments is via an open gallery located at the rear of the building. The entry door to each apartment is in a recessed space generated between the clothes drying cabins. This space can be used as a small terrace adjacent to the kitchen that people can take over as an extension of their apartment, stimulating social interaction and neighbourly communication.
The wall separating this terrace and the kitchen houses all utility ducts in order to make them easily accessible for maintenance, but also to give the window sill an exaggerated depth so that it becomes a 60cm galvanised metal shelf, that serves to place and pass food and beverages right from the kitchen to a table outside.