casa 1413 by harquitectes emulates the ancient catalonia stone walls

in eastern catalonia lies the small historic ullastret — a village characterized by an urban fabric of ancient stone architecture and narrow, irregular streets. a stone wall once marked the boundaries of the site taken on by HARQUITECTES. in an effort to widen the adjacent street, the catalonia-based studio was responsible for the demolition of the pre-existing wall and the construction of a house on the estate. the house, entitled ‘casa 1413’, was designed to surround the property and serve as a ‘new wall’ to preserve the language of the streetscape. this wall-house maintains the traditional urban continuity while simultaneously allowing HARQUITECTES to experiment with a new, elongated typology. with this building-type, the program is kept to a single level which adapts to the topography and determines the new geometry of the street.

all images by adrià goula

HARQUITECTES’ ‘casa 1413’ follows the material and construction logics of the pre-existing wall, but adapts these logics to current requirements — the project is comprised only of load-bearing walls which are fabricated with reused stones from the original. these upcycled stones are mixed with aggregate mined from the site along with limestone, cement, and small insulating particles of expanding glass. rather than using the traditional method of stacking the stones, the wall is coffered and lifted. the street-facing surface material is chipped and left rough while the interior, which opens to the garden, expresses clean detailing and geometries.

the wall of casa 1413 expresses a dramatic variation in thickness as the furniture and other human-scale elements have been incorporated into its poché. the porous nature of the plan shows the relationship between the domestic and shared spaces, and how the garden permeates the interior. the linear relationship of each program creates an elongated sequence of corridors. the fluctuation in climate over the year results in the transformative nature of the house — while the heavy material absorbs and later releases solar radiation during winter, the interior spaces can be opened up entirely to become porches facing the garden during the warmer season.