The starting point for this passive house in Maresme is to combine a conventional residential programme with a series of multi-purpose spaces that will accommodate the family’s different needs.

PROGRAM

Our clients are a family of four with a fairly clear brief, combining a conventional home with a series of multi-purpose spaces depending on the different activities of each family member.

Thus, in addition to the core programme of bedrooms, dining room, living room, kitchen and bathrooms, the project includes a large parking area that must also function as a workshop or storage space, a playroom, an independent studio with a patio, and a guest bedroom.

Based on these premises, we understand that there are two programme requirements that can be addressed independently, distinguishing between the rooms that make up the family’s more private programme and those intended to accommodate social and work-related uses.

SITE PLANNING AND BIOCLIMATIC STRATEGY

Access to the plot is from the highest level of the site, on the east side, and from there the slope decreases, providing land with a favourable south-west orientation.

We decided that the best strategy to address the steep slope was to adapt to it, using the gradient to position an eastern retaining wall that would allow us to free up the rest of the plot and open the house to the sun.

In this way, we created an eastern wall, attached to and perpendicular to the slope, which allows us to retain the soil at the highest part near the entrance, thereby resolving the site’s level change.

The wall also extends northwards, providing the necessary thermal buffer on the least favourable orientation and allowing the home to open fully to the best southern and western orientations, defining an outdoor garden and forecourt space.

The resulting south-west orientation is ideal for maximising solar gain, as we receive radiation to the south throughout the day and can take advantage of the last rays of sun on winter afternoons from the west.

PROGRAM

These initial strategies, which allow us to make the most of the site’s topography and orientation, result in an L-shaped home that separates the programme into two volumes, each located in a longitudinal wing, with a hinge-like element appearing at the vertex of the L.

This point corresponds to the entrance to the home on the first floor and becomes a key point as it coincides with the buried area adjacent to the slope.

Here we create a double-height connection between the two floors, with a glazed roof like a greenhouse, allowing natural ventilation and daylight at a strategic point that connects both vertical and horizontal circulation.

This courtyard is also one of the home’s main bioclimatic elements, as it is formed by a skylight-roof that regulates temperature both in winter, when it remains closed to create a greenhouse effect that warms the interior, and in summer, when it is protected from direct sun and opened to generate effective ventilation in the home’s two wings.

CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM

From a construction standpoint, the home is conceived through a system of retaining walls that form the elements attached to the terrain to address the slope, complemented by a base of ceramic walls that provide thermal mass to the whole.

The ceramic walls are protected externally with wood-fibre insulation. On the ground floor, the wood fibre is protected with a second leaf of exposed ceramic brick, and on the first floor it is finished with an external lime render as an ETICS system.