AR_07     

St. Cugat 

New build

Located in Vallès Occidental, surrounded by an urban landscape that demands privacy without giving up spaciousness, the embryonic project of RAAR was born. The single-family house plays with the duality between openness and protection. Passing visuals in the longitudinal direction, opacity in the transverse direction; a home that breathes without exposing itself.
Since the beginning, this project has sought a balance between duality and unity: two semi-detached houses that, in their external reading, merge into a single volume. The challenge has been to draw invisible limits, where each house breathes independently, but without breaking the harmony of the whole. Only the pool acts as a shared link, a meeting point that unites without imposing. The architecture plays with light and the gaze, filtering visuals to preserve intimacy without giving up solar warmth. Thus, integration and autonomy are intertwined in a serene dialogue, where each space finds its place naturally.

Two central walls influenced by the cardinal points structure the building, and between them, the vertical cores organize the communication between floors. The homes rise 3 meters above street level, marking a clear separation of accesses: road mobility finds its entrance in the garage, in the basement, while pedestrian access is drawn directly to the ground floor, located at the +3 meters level, ascending through some construction steps that adapt to the natural relief of the terrain. On this basis, the ground and first floors unfold into two parallel volumes, not symmetrical but in harmony, generating a play of contrasts and routes. The roof, flat and impassable, closes the complex emphatically. It is a refuge designed to inhabit light and intimacy, with character, precision and a clear look towards its natural environment.

The basement is presented as a functional refuge. A large garage houses the vehicles, fluidly connected to the upper floors through the vertical core within the walls.
The ground floor is the heart of the house, where the daytime program unfolds naturally. Kitchen, dining room and living room flow into an open space, while to the north, more private areas dialogue with the environment, filtering the soft light of the landscape.
On the upper floor, the rest is organized into three rooms. The main one, en suite and with a dressing room, opens to the natural park. The other two, more contained but equally generous, look towards the interior of the plot, preserving its privacy.