A tiny farm cottage is meant to become an occasional apartment through a complete rehabilitation. This small intervention crystallizes an attitude that seeks to identify rural morphologies and join them at the rate of development of this environment. Urban planning instruments can often endanger these morphologies, leading to the destruction of sometimes secular constructions by increasing building rights. Such is the case of this plot, intended to locate a three-story building that has nothing to do with the scale of the urban fabric of the town of Ojacastro. The owners’ sensitive criteria, together with the willingness of the City Council to allow the intervention, have managed to stop the degradation of this corner of the town avoiding the loss of heritage that would have meant the execution of the urban planning.
The inside is conceived as a habitable piece of furniture: a light balloon-frame house is built, filling the space between the massive stone walls. A reduced surface requires the entire house program to be developed in a single space. Foldable furniture, a wall bed, a kitchen hiding wardrobe, storage, home appliances… All of them are hidden in the thick walls, but ready to be used whenever needed. The living room is easily transformed into the dining room and then again into the bedroom.
Regarding the construction, the stone walls are kept and strengthened, so are roof tiles. The seriously harmed wooden framework of the roof is replaced by a similar fishbone-shaped ceiling made out of laminated timber beams.
