Apartment in Valladolid

The apartment building, following the requirements of the mid-nineteenth century, is dated between 1902 and 1903. It is an industrial building, marked by the proximity to the train station. The building has a free floor plan, built with several bays of wooden supports independent from the adobe block partition and its solid brick facades.

The intervention is characterized by the formal purification of the complex typology. The latter is the result of a long floor plan, with bedrooms and outbuildings attached to interior patios, but with two facades immediately connected to Muro and Gamazo streets. The east façade is used for morning light for the bedrooms and the west façade for afternoon light for the living areas.

The intention of the project is the complete liberation of the facades, integrating all the service spaces in the less illuminated areas, generating a central amoeba, disaggregated, raised a few centimeters for technical reasons, to absorb the irregularities of a singular geometry.

The rest of the house is resolved by means of two pieces of furniture. These pieces of furniture follow the privacy of the spaces: The first one, slightly thicker, is attached to the dividing wall of the building, marking the transition from the public to the private area (dining room-pantry-laundry-dressing room). The second is arranged like a herringbone (kitchen-hall-access cabinet-room) crossing the house through the central part.

The house responds to a contemporary way of life, eliminating the typology associated with the old ways of living, but, at the same time, incorporating inherited elements, such as the wooden supports, and the brick east façade or the views over calle Muro. This is intended to add a new layer, which does not completely erase the traces of the past but establishes a conversation, adding a new chapter to the contemporary discourse on housing.

Alvaro Moral,
Daniel González,
Manuel Cuadrado

Javier Bravo