Jaume’s House / Guillem Carrera

In response to this analysis, the house adopts a singular strategy: the main façade does not face the street; it looks onto the garden, facing south. The entire building is structured towards the garden, but maximum integration is created on the ground floor by a porch in the center of the house that connects the exterior and interior of the house. A constructive discontinuity is created in order to have a central shady space for living and to have the width of the plot free of buildings and in direct contact with the non-built spaces. To the right and left of the porch there is a practical living program: on one side a suite with bathroom and dressing room and on the other a living-kitchen-dining room, which is connected to the study on the first floor by a double-height. At the same time, this space is also connected to the basement, which is used for facilities and storage. The indoor program is completed on the first floor with two bedrooms and an additional bathroom, and the outdoor program with a terrace on the first floor and a second terrace lookout point on the covered floor from which you can see various visual landmarks of the city of Tarragona such as the old town, the sea, and the Ermita de la Salut. The volumetry was designed using simple shapes and a mixed structure according to the construction of the existing buildings in the area, without changing the original topography. The street façade has two height levels in order to adapt and to create the transition between a first neighboring building on the ground floor and a second four-floor building. The non-buildings outside areas should be occupied by a sidewalk on the edge of the building and by landscaped or vegetable garden areas.

The plot has a limited amount of building space. For this reason, various strategies have been developed to use the space and expand the perception of the dimension of the interior space, such as the outside porch, the double-height of the living-dining room, the integration of the circulation areas within the different rooms, the capture of natural light through strategically placed windows or skylights and the creation of three triangular protruding windows that at the same time become floating interiors spaces of seclusion and in visual contact with the garden.