Transformation of an agricultural shed. Inhabiting the countryside by Flexoarquitectura + Bàrbara Vich

Description of project by Flexoarquitectura + Bàrbara Vich

In the face of unemployment in the countryside, the commission represents an opportunity to give new meaning to the exploitation of the countryside.

01. Opportunity
To this end, the coexistence of the three sectors; primary, secondary, and tertiary, by combining self-sufficient agricultural exploitation or directed to third parties, with the offer of services linked to the client's company, graphic design, is taken into account.

02. Context
The existing croter's house (peasant with little land to cultivate) is a volume built at the beginning of the 20th century consisting of an oven, a hearth, a well, and two differentiated rooms, a seasonal dwelling with occupation linked to the harvest and hunting calendar. The renovation and extension have been carried out in two phases: the first phase that has rehabilitated the existing house and extended it with three new pavilions around a central courtyard, and the second phase construction of a swimming pool shelter, a two-story studio, a new vegetable garden area and a pergola for protection from the south.

The regulations applicable in the area permit the construction of buildings with a rectangular ground plan and prismatic volume with a predominance of a wall over a window, sloping roofs, and finishes in local materials or colors. The strategy for the extension of the house consists of the repetition and rotation of the existing volume.

03. Proposal
The volumetric rotundity of the similar volumes makes possible the fractioned or total occupation of the house as a strategy of programmatic sustainability (it makes possible multiple interior and exterior, individual and collective occupations) and energetic sustainability (it allows the sectorisation of the active systems according to the occupation and makes possible the maximization of cross ventilation, energy capture in winter and heat dissipation in summer).

The cross plan generates an interior courtyard garden whose opening system allows it to become part of the uses foreseen in the ring circulation area and stabilizes the interior temperature (capturing gallery in winter and shading in summer thanks to deciduous trees). The courtyard functions as an impluvium (both the original and the new roofs drain inwards) and the roof maintain the connection with the existing well by incorporating a new rainwater tank (the agricultural use of the estate is maintained and the planting of fruit trees is increased).

The construction of the pool-pool is based on formal criteria that update the traditional idea of a pool (a prismatic volume that emerges from the ground). The study recovers the verticality and autonomy of the volumes for agricultural use, which enjoy a certain formal freedom as they respond automatically to the direct needs of their use, whether it be the storage of tools or animals or the exploitation of natural resources. These new uses are structured with a pergola that recalls the "race" of traditional constructions in Mallorca. The race is the embryo of the street on a domestic scale, the space adjacent to the main façade of a house, and the most public place in exceptional periods such as slaughtering, festivals, or cereal harvesting.

We define the technical and material response based on the resources offered by the local cultural context. Decisions are made based on technical/material resources of proximity (seas, ceramics) combined with others of non-local but nearby distances (laminated boards, wooden beams).

Winter collection The courtyard gallery is an energy collector/accumulator and dissipator towards the pavilions.  

Dissipation Summer Fragmentation of volumes and cross ventilation between windows and shaded courtyard.

Water cycle Impluvium as rainwater harvesting system and connected to existing well.