House C / RTA-Office

We received this great house from RTA-Office. It is located in Barcelona, Spain. Designed by architect Santiago Parramón (RTA-Office), the House C is characterized by its geometry, the skin and the cuts that let you discover the dermis.

Further information and photos after the break.

Space, three-dimensional continuity. There are no elevations, no plans, or sections. This is space within a solid object, a block of black basalt in which we make a number of penetrations as in a quarry, mine tunnels and corridors that communicate with the outside, with the light of the morning, of noon and the darkness of the night.

model 01

An emotional design, the indivisible cross-sectional view of the object. Dark skin, pale dermis. Contrast. Cuts and cracks, reinforcing the change of scale, working for the presence. A unitary object that proposes its maximum dimension.

The complexity of the site works in our favour: the closed outer perimeter, walled, stoney; inside the glass folds open. We traverse the wall. It’s the north face of the building and there we place the access: a spectacle of natural light, reflections, transparencies, an explosion of multiplying images.

A kaleidoscopic space, beauty, image, observation. All at the same time thanks to the effects produced by the transparent crystals of different sizes and angles. Everything impacts on the building. Nature enters the interior through these cuts and segments the different rooms of the house. At dusk, transparency overrides limits: the light of day is now projected from inside the house to the outdoors.