Reutilization of spaces. El Garaje by NOMOS

Description of project by NOMOS

The Garage is a mechanical workshop, surrounded by a parking ramp around its perimeter, transformed into a dwelling, which extends between the street and the courtyard.

The overhead door of the old garage is replaced by an enclosure sensitive to the passage of light. A surface of white concrete blocks, pavés, and steel anticipate the constructive solutions to the interior of the house. The rest of the existing façade is cut to accommodate two additional openings. From the interior, the façade frames partial fragments of the urban context and regulates the necessary degrees of intimacy between the house and the street. A threshold is thus constructed that serves as an antechamber to the kitchen and offers a multipurpose space capable of doubling its surface area during the day, while at night a large sliding door closes off the children's room.

The new dwelling is conceived as a collection of connected rooms. Without corridors, the house is organized around two central spaces: the kitchen and the dining room.

A series of parallel walls define the sequence of rooms and frame the diagonal views between them. The walls are built with prefabricated white concrete blocks that are interlocked at the corners with pieces of clay to prevent cuts in the blocks. This constructive solution, the result of an economy of means also serves as a fixing point for the electrical installation. The proportion of the spaces is directly related to the dimensions of the concrete blocks.

The Garage is a contemporary domestic space built based on an additive system of rooms of similar proportions, in which the program is not allowed to dominate the design.