Brácana always wanted its own church. The people from this district in Illora’s township (Granada, Spain), historically added since the Catholic Kings’s time to the Davila’s lineage (later Counts of Guadiana), were always spiritually assisted in outside temples of the village, either for their provenience to other urban centres like the nearby village of Alomartes, or their private character, case of the only religious building of the town: the particular oratory, then private chapel (1891) of the ancestral Lord D. Luis Dávila Ponce de León (IX count of Guadiana), restored by his heirs in 1940.
Collaborating Architects: Palma Pajarón Bermúdez-Cañete. Architect, Néstor Cruz Ruiz. Architect, Rosa María Pérez de la Torre. Architect, Manel González de Ribot. Arquitecto
Client: Parroquia Nª Sra. De las Mercedes of Brácana
The project involved the design and construction of a suburban detached home, located on a square 600 m2 plot.
In general terms, the residential development where the house is located is made up of plots with a considerable level of occupancy and development potential, with minimum spacings between neighbouring plots that are not overly generous.
Following the years after the civil war, the economic perils did not allow the city to expand and yet Barcelona experienced a considerable increase of population. Barcelona’s industrial past allowed it to recover slightly quicker than the rural, more agriculture-based economies of the rest of the country, attracting many families that were in search of highly sought after employment.
On a perfectly square diaphanous room -15 x 15 m- with four central pillars, the project proposes the structuring of the future clinic in three programmatic bands of very similar proportions:
Waiting Area:
The first band is the most public, which is accessed and basically contains the reception and a large waiting room. All this generous space of reception and waiting opens its views towards an outer square through the great circles that make up the facade. The reception, organized in a circular piece of furniture, becomes the centerpiece of this first space and from it is controlled its operation. After the reception, there is a small administration office and a small relaxation room.
The Cuevas del Pino estate sits in the foothills of Sierra Morena, in calcarenite stone terrain arranged in slightly sloping strata that gives rise to various geological formations native to the area, among which are the caves that traditionally have been used for farming and livestock.
This house is a hybrid of several types of houses: first of all the first thing it wants is to be a “house of the Camp d’Elx”, as those still populate the rural districts with its peculiar silhouette, whose traditional architecture makes use of ceramic decks inclined and the deep porches -for shade- oriented at noon; But at the same time it also wants to be a “house-patio Mediterranean”, introverted, protected from the outside and purely white; And also has in its genetics a “Californian house”, one of those sophisticated houses of the admired modern architecture of Los Angeles -with whom we share Mediterranean climate- that unfold their plants -many L shaped- in open horizontal spaces which overlook the gardens and the refreshing swimming pools.
The owners, who have been living in Barcelona for quite some time, were looking for a home where they could start a new professional and family adventure. They contacted us with two different apartments, from which it was very hard to choose from, but had a very clear idea of their needs.
The landscape of this Almeria area has been used as scenery for forty years: from the birth of a genre such as the Spaghetti Western with Sergio Leone taking the lead with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars, to modest productions such as How I won the war by Richard Lester. The fact that such an abundance of artists agrees in the choice of this enclave as a backdrop for their creations gives us an idea of its scenic quality. The isolation and the lack of development of this region have also helped.
Some houses close in on themselves when connection with their surroundings is not desirable. However, others open up to their setting when it is clear that it endows them with qualities and provides their raison d’être and hence must become an intrinsic part of the project. This is the case of the Juncal y Rodney home since it is built on a plot of land located on the Begur massif (Girona) in one of the most sublime settings of the Costa Brava. The longitudinal volume of the north-south-facing building of two storeys – the upper one with three bedrooms and the lower one with the shared spaces – is thus open to the Mediterranean and the series of mountains and coves that are glimpsed on the horizon.
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