PMMT draws from catalan tradition to design PIN8 house in girona

a contemporary farm house takes shape in catalonia

Located in the Catalan town of Baix Empordà outside Girona, the Pin8 House by PMMT Arquitectura takes shape as a contemporary dwelling that works to blend the area’s urban and heritage requirements with the needs of its modern occupants. This design takes into account the characteristics of the environment, and makes use of sustainable materials and construction systems, a flexible logic, and works to integrate the interior and exterior to create a breezy, sunlit living space.

images © Del Rio Bani | @delriobani

step inside the sunlit ‘pin8 house’

The team at PMMT Arquitectura designs its Pin8 House as a two-story structure with a rectangular floor plan. The architecture focuses on achieving maximum permeability through strategic elements such as large openings, double-height spaces, and landscaped patios. The ground floor features expansive openings that provide a direct connection to the garden, while the double-height spaces offer breathtaking views of the sky and the surrounding environment from various perspectives and heights.

The first floor of the house showcases three patios that not only comply with façade regulations but also flood the interior with natural light and introduce lush vegetation into the built volume. This careful integration of the house with its surroundings not only enhances the visual appeal but also contributes to its good bioclimatic behavior.

Bioclimatic Design and Thermal Comfort

The Pin8 House incorporates a combination of three key strategies: openings, double-height spaces, and patios. These strategies not only facilitate connections to the outside from every room but also ensure excellent bioclimatic performance. Well-oriented openings on the ground floor maximize solar incidence during winter, while cross ventilation, facilitated by the chimney effect, prevents thermal stratification of the air during summer, ensuring optimal thermal comfort throughout the year.

Flexibility and Future Expansion

The ground floor of the Pin8 House primarily accommodates the main functional areas, reserving the upper floor for a guest room with a bathroom, as well as landscaped patios and mezzanines that open up to the double-height rooms. Thoughtful placement of stairs and mezzanines enables future expansion possibilities, offering functional flexibility in case the family grows or their needs evolve over time.

The ground floor is home to key spaces such as bedrooms, a studio, laundry room, bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, and living room. The heart of the house lies in the double-height space that combines the living room, dining room, and kitchen, all completely open to the garden and one of the upper patios. Large sliding windows provide a direct connection to the garden, and when open, they free up the corners of the rooms. These windows are protected from solar radiation by movable wooden panels located on the outside of the enclosure.

Marrying Tradition and Modernity

The Pin8 House achieves a harmonious balance between tradition and modernity through its design and construction. The ground floor embraces openness and permeability, while the upper floor features an opaquer envelope. The perimeter structure of the house consists of metal pillars supporting a cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure, visible from the interior. This wooden structure evokes the image of an inverted boat or the ribcage of the whale from the Pinocchio story, which inspired the name of the house. In addition to the wooden structure, other construction elements and furniture in the house are sourced from local manufacturers and workshops, making the Pin8 House a pre-industrialized and 0Km construction, deeply rooted in the region.