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Architects: Sau Taller d'Arquitectura
- Area: 740 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Andrés Flajszer
Text description provided by the architects. The project is based on the premise of preserving the existing building of Can Biel, a late 19th-century construction located in All, a town in Cerdanya near the Pyrenees, by transforming it into 4 housing units.
It is a construction of stone walls and 4m spans, with very poor slabs and clear heights incompatible with the intended uses. The proposal is to expand the section horizontally while preserving the existing volumetrics. The result is a building approximately 40 meters long and 2 floors high. From this perspective, the intervention involves consolidating the existing construction through new slabs and an external structure that acts as a buttress for the 8m high stone walls.
The new slabs are designed with a mixed wood-concrete structure and incorporate interior metal ties that connect the two longitudinal stone walls.
The permeability of the retaining wall to the north is assumed with the aim of leaving it exposed. This decision requires surface drainage on the ground floor and managing the contact of structural elements and finishes against this wall.
Regarding the finishes, the project works with "naked" materials, essentially dry construction materials, except for the repairs of the existing building, plastering of existing walls, and jambs. The objective is twofold: on the one hand, to reduce construction costs and allocate resources only to what is essential; on the other hand, to preserve and enhance the historical memory of the original building, since switching to a lightweight system allows for reading and distinguishing the original elements from those of the intervention.
Finally, with regards to the interior spaces, since it is a very small structural bay and with the aim of providing maximum spaciousness and a feeling of space, the project works with two basic strategies: First, expanding and freeing up the interior space in section, creating double and triple spaces; second, taking advantage of all existing openings and proposing new ones, strategically placed towards the views and the sun. With this double strategy, the project ensures that the visual perspectives are elongated and the feeling of interior space is widened both horizontally and vertically.
