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Architects: Arc Studi Arquitectura
- Area: 280 m²
- Year: 2024
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Photographs:Del Rio Bani
Text description provided by the architects. The house Les Barraques is not just a new building: it is a declaration of principles in defense of the anonymous and intuitive territorial heritage. It represents the recovery of artisanal trades, traditional materials, and a vision of architecture as the result of a collaborative process in which each decision is based on a coherent synergy—a discreet homage to local architecture.
The creation of the house evokes the idyllic imaginary of the fishermen's huts at the foot of a lonely cove, or the almost faded image of the beaches of the Costa Brava in Catalonia, with its vaults and other elements of traditional seafaring architecture. The sobriety and functionality of these buildings are taken as virtues, conceiving a building that is born from its essence to develop its architectural proposal.
The structure of the building is the foundation of all spaces. This composition gives equal importance to all of them, democratizing them. There is a loss of hierarchy among the spaces. The few non-structural partitions are circumstantial elements that do not reach the ceiling, easy to modify or eliminate without altering the essence of the building, which resides in its structure and not in its use, which is ephemeral. Without these partitions, the building is empty, flexible, with spaces configured by the structural necessity itself, where the installations are stored and the living space is arranged in reference blocks. The building is easily adaptable in the future to a wide range of uses, thus offering a response to the constantly changing world in which we live.
The configuration of the house is simple in its structural clarity: four vaults cover the main spaces, supported by thick-walled boxes and flat roofs that counteract the thrusts of the vaults, which are used for services such as cleaning and storage. The vaults are 5 meters wide and 9 meters long, traditional dimensions that respect the proportions of the old fishermen's huts of Calella de Palafrugell and, at the same time, adapt to the terrain. The service boxes maintain a proportion of half to the vaults. These act as elements of regulation of the building, mainly at the climatic level.
Using this building is part of an experience that mobilizes the senses. A rhythmic contrast of compression and decompression, of opacity and transparency, of extroversion and introversion is inherent throughout the building through the constant dialogue between the vaults, open to the outside space, and the wall boxes clad in native stone, closed in on themselves. The green courtyards are naturally integrated into the building's ecosystem, collaborating with the natural climate control and sanitizing the environment. The geometry, the materials, the great mass of the enclosures, and the configuration of the complex intimately evoke the idea of living in a "cave".
