4 Porches 4 Skylights House

Reading the project

The clients asked for a house closed to the outside, but open from the inside. With introverted facades, to maintain the privacy of their adjacent plot, but with generous views towards the totality of its carefully landscaped perimeter. The geometry of four triangular porches solved the paradoxical demand due to the “inverted funnel effect” of their walls. The solution dislocated the geometry of the whole plan and created very rich visual relations between indoor and outdoor areas. Opening the big sliding doors of the porches, hiding them into the walls, the four triangular outdoor areas connect and the whole house becomes one great porch.

A big shadow between four intimate “pavilions” (the three bedrooms and the sitting room) with the constant presence of the changing daylight and the garden views. This intense relation between interior and exterior was also brought into the bathrooms, where three triangular skylights lit the interior rooms, functioning as sunlight kaleidoscopes. The residence is a comfortable and protected “interior” (almost exterior) not “in front of” or “by” nature, but absolutely surrounded by it.

Project facts

Dates

2007 – 2010

Client

Couple of lawyers from Madrid

Gross area

130 m²

Budget

220.000 €

Contractor

QM SL

Coauthors

Jesús Cardona

Structures

Begoña Cazorla

Installations

QM SL

Technical architect

Joan Cardona

Pictures

José Hevia

Collaborators

Xosé Domínguez, René Guder

Case-study note: the facts, photographs and credits on this page come from the project's own records.