16 semi detached houses Gorraiz
2010 - 2012
Location
Navarra. Spain
Client
Inmovest. S.L.
Author photo / infographics
Mikel Muruzabal
Floor area
2.944 m2
Budget
2.566.920,00 €
Awards
Sellectioned COAVN 2013 Awards.

FUNCTIONAL SOLUTION

The houses are attached two by two. They have, therefore, three façades (north, south and east/west) sharing a wall that divides longitudinally their spaces.
Next to the street, there is a pergola that serves as a parking for two vehicles and covers the way until the access door. The house and the parking share a small patio surrounded by the pergola, the kitchen and by a space "available" for different uses.
A small bite in the corner of the main building announces the access door to the hause, rotated in the direction east/west to avoid the nord orientation. Once inside, the hall gives access to the kitchen, to the toilet on ground floor and to the longitudinal staircase that leads up to the first floor. The living-room with fireplace, is situated in the background, recovering the entire width of the house, and ending with a flying porch that protects their big windows opened to the south, the garden and the views.
On the first floor, the staircase is received by a corridor with enough width to be used as a play area or study area. From it, you can enter to two bedrooms and to the bathroom that they share. The principal bedroom has the door facing to the staircase and have a big dressing room and a bathroom, with natural lighting, which is subdivided into two areas, one with washbasins and the other one with the bath and the toilet.
In the configuration and design of the houses has been given a great importance to the orientation of the rooms; kitchen and bedrooms to the nord, living-room and principal bedroom to the south, that is to say , towards the garden and the landscape; places of transit to east/west, touring the garden corridor that the plots have along these orientations.

 

IMAGE

The buildings have a small scale as it corresponds to the small size of the plots. For this reason they are extensive in length but low in height. They start with a single height, from the entrance pergola, growing, with the slope of the roof, up to the two heights in the garden area.
So you get two scales: one smaller, with one floor, surrounding the courtyard; and  other bigger, with two floors, towards the landscape opened to the views. To get this game of scales the project causes a light displacement in horizontal, between the ground floor and first floor, so that the alignment of the bedrooms that are overlooking the courtyard is moved to back and the alignment of the principal bedroom is moved ahead covering with its flight the porch area.
Having a single plane of cover it is necessary to make something in order to get a bigger height in the bedrooms that are looking the courtyard. That is why, from the main cover plan, is  raised a sloping inverted plan, in the opposite direction of the main one, that allows to open windows of these night pieces.
The windows are generally generous, along the entire façade of the rooms. However, their heights are different depending on the orientations and situations.
Finally, deserves a special mention the plot closing that coincides with the entrance doors under the pergola. There is one door for the vehicles and one door for the pedestrian. The rest of the closing is completed with a permeable fence formed with aluminium profiles.