Comprehensive housing reform. Ruzafa, Valencia. 2011

A low, elongated one, without natural light and a cave feeling. A place that had lived with its back to the sky for decades.

The starting point of this project was clear: introduce light where there was none. Not through artifice, but literally opening the building. The solution was to make a large hole in the existing floor, connecting the interior of the house with the patio on the upper floor and allowing natural light to descend to the lowest level of the building.

This operation, apparently simple in its concept, concentrated the greatest technical effort of the reform: the structural reinforcement of the floor, the execution of the new metal carpentry and glazing, and the construction of a patio-garden on the first floor that acts as a cushion between the private space and the sky.

The result organizes the house into two floors connected by a metal ladder of wooden steps. The ground floor houses the day area – living room, dining room and kitchen – now bathed in overhead light that runs through the entire space throughout the day. The upper floor houses the bedrooms and the bathroom, with a large library that looks out into the double-height void.

The finishes are committed to austerity: white on vertical walls, microcement on floors and bathrooms, oak wood on carpentry and steps. A sober language that does not compete with light, but rather stars in it.

The decoration, chosen by the clients themselves, dialogues naturally with the architecture. Designer furniture coexists with inherited pieces and personal objects—paintings, sculptures, books—that give the space character and biography. The result is not a catalog home, but an inhabited home, where each object has its history and its place.

THE PROCESS

FINAL RESULT

Juli Vila Cortell