Casa 1736 Barcelona, Catalan luxury home design, Modern Catalonia house images
Casa 1736 in Barcelona
19 September 2024
Architects: HARQUITECTES
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Photos by Adrià Goula
Casa 1736, Spain
A house in the middle of the city. A home designed for a family of 5 or 6, with a significant program, located in an area of high urban density. Despite the wide and long plot, the house is surrounded by other buildings and faces the pressures of city life. Of the existing structure, only the street facade will remain, as it is protected. The regulations allow for a ground floor and two additional floors, providing ample depth to meet the client’s needs, but the challenge is that this depth risks creating a dark, poorly ventilated interior space.
The project tackles this by prioritizing and transforming the center of the house into its best feature. The wide plot offers the opportunity to recover traditional typologies, such as the interior patio or atrium, where the center becomes the heart of the home—full of light, well-ventilated, and deeply connected to the outside. This central space not only divides the house but also creates an expansive, open area that brings in natural light and air, making the house feel more spacious and breathable. The verticality of this space, with its zenith opening, enhances the flow of light and air, facilitating ventilation and allowing hot air to escape upwards.
Around this central core, the extensive program is organized into four important spaces on each floor, complemented by smaller, secondary spaces. This hierarchy absorbs the irregularities of the plot, allowing the main spaces to remain regular and orthogonal, while the smaller, interstitial spaces adapt to the irregularities. Thick, heavy structural walls provide thermal stability, but are selectively hollowed out to house more intimate, sensitive areas.
The walls are built using “poor” cast-in-place concrete—a robust, monolithic material with high thermal inertia, yet porous enough to regulate temperature and humidity. The ceilings in the main spaces are made of wood, contrasting with the more mineral, excavated feel of the complementary spaces.
The central space serves as the most collective, primordial part of the house. It is an atrium on the ground and first floors, and a cloister on the second floor. The atrium, with its four central pillars, frames a living room space, while the upper cloister, though similarly light-filled and high, surrounds the central courtyard, emphasizing ventilation and circulation.
This urban house reconnects with traditional Mediterranean architectural models, such as Gothic courtyards, incorporating natural light, air stratification, and bioclimatic principles. It is a modern urban house that embraces its surroundings and reestablishes a connection with the city.
Casa 1736, Spain – Property Information
Design: HARQUITECTES – https://www.harquitectes.com/
Architect: HARQUITECTES (David Lorente, Josep Ricart, Xavier Ros, Roger Tudó)
Collaborators: Miquel Arias, Maya Torres, Maria Ferré, Albert Ferraz
Team: DSM arquitectes (estructura), M7 Enginyers (instal·lacions), Carles Bou (arquitecte tècnic)
Project years: 2018-2019
Construction years: 2020-2023
Built area: 631 sq. m.
Photos: Adrià Goula
Casa 1736, Barcelona luxury home images / information 190924 from HARQUITECTES
Location: Barcelona, Catalunya, North East Spain, south western Europe
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