MGM architects (morales-giles-mariscal)
We operate on an old Palace house inhabited by 11 families seeking their space between the old walls of the neighborhood of Pópulo in Cádiz.
The project aims at relocating tenants in a decent way in their estate, dignify their lives without losing their memory. Use the technical advances means and provide the ventilation and lighting necessary to create habitable spaces where before none existed, without falling into the modern standardization and rationalization of the space, learning from the casual and the arbitrary to enrich singularities.
The formal complexity and the initial conditions of this project, intent on preserving the historical values of the house, leads us to: rehabilitate and consolidate the 18th c. and more antique walls (on the ground and first floor); restructure without altering courtyards (according to the regulations); replace the building (on the second floor), and expand in height (setback attic).
Ground and first floors are consolidated. Over them flourishes the new architecture which completes the program and consolidates the morphology of the house.
The need to maintain the same built area, without modifying the height of the facade leads to develop a project that accommodates five decent houses and the premises for a neighbours’ association on the ground floor.
One of the main goals is to recover the street character the arm of the plot connected to the little plaza next to New Cathedral once possessed. It will be a private street, two storeys high, partially covered, ventilated and lit through two courtyards and a hole in the facade. This will allow windows onto the street and permit the creation of an urban landscape inside. With this move the rectangular floor plan that the house had in the eighteenth century, at the height of its splendour, is recovered and the old façade wall, next to the plaza, is kept.
Ultimately, the project aims at introducing us through a tangential tour to the estate in the time of its maximum splendour (18th century). To that purpose, what was once a street is being carved. Openings to the sky and urban space ensure the spatial and architectural quality of the whole. This carving aligns itself with the vertical space of the main courtyard, which emerges on the cover along with the new attics built. Three characters who look to the Cathedral and the Mediterranean.
In the house of PĂłpulo, the vacuum squirms and solidifies thanks to space of the mold that makes up the new street inside of the puzzle- houses.
© MGM
Links: MGM architects
