The proposed program is simple: to build a family cellar, a space for enjoyment where friends can gather to dine and taste fine wines. To achieve this, the program aims to support the main house while also creating two generous spaces for celebration. These spaces are complemented by a series of auxiliary uses that help define the urban edge. The bathroom, kitchen, storage room, and entrance threshold consolidate the urban front. On the other hand, various grilling areas, an outdoor porch, and a resting space configure the side facing the backyard.

At the same time, the project delves into the memory of this typology of constructions in the Oja Valley, particularly in Bañares, recognizing some fundamental values for the configuration and construction of the project, which are outlined below:

The constructive typology of warehouses, drying rooms, or family cellars is always executed in brick or adobe, achieving an optimal relationship between their compact form and the material used.

Use of a regional construction technique, the “aparejo americano.” This solves the composition of a cavity wall of 35 cm, placing two rows of crossed headers (one resting on the other) and four continuous stretchers, forming a complex bond.
Compact floor plan with few openings to the exterior and shaded spaces at the center.
Presence of a central fireplace for heating and meeting thermal demands.

Wooden roof structures supported by continuous load-bearing walls. A scissor truss configuration is used, recovering the specific knowledge of the valley. Structures are based on the physical limits of locally available wood, approximately 5 meters in length.
Once these aspects are understood, the project proposes a purely material approach. Everything built is structure. From the foundation to the top of the wall, clay is used as the construction material. The brick and its rules dictate the space. The space is interwoven, creating an architecture of boundaries and thresholds. An architecture perceived in fragments, in discontinuity. This approach allows the use of a common brick (acoustic brick db10 from Cerámica Sampedro in Lardero) and elevates its dignity as a construction material. Ultimately, the projected architecture seeks to explore how one inhabits the interior of clay matter.

Additionally, all available resources are utilized. For the roof configuration, laminated pine wood from Soria is used, with a section of 10×20 centimeters and an intermediate scissor truss of the same dimensions. This roof structure creates a sort of latticed space, allowing discontinuous light entry from the west. Finally, the flooring uses two materials produced in the region. Handmade bricks from the Alberite brickyards are used to configure thresholds where the wall structure has been removed, highlighting their load-bearing capacity. Terrazo, produced in Alfaro, provides a cool flooring solution for the long Riojan summers.

The cellar in Bañares is a relational architecture that, by connecting with the roots of the village and the valley in which it is situated, utilizes all available knowledge to create a place deeply rooted in local memory. In short, an architecture that weaves together memory, perception, and experience.

Text provided by the architects.

Once the first acions have been decided, the next of the strategies will link heaven and earth. Two complementary construcion operaions are proposed. A gravid wall that belongs to a stereotomic and heavy type that emerges from the earth, and a light wooden structure, floaing on the concrete columns.

The new architecture is proposed through load-bearing walls that consolidate the program on the outer edge. On the north the access is placed, which is reached by descending a steep slope that has a flared hollow, linking the Hermitage, Church and paio. On this same wall, but facing South, two climate-protected spaces are responsible for providing shelter inside. The bathroom, kitchen and other complementary uses consolidate the construcion on the western limit, configuring a self-absorbed architecture that observes the exterior garden landscape through two openings. To the east, the exising construcion, the grocery, connects with the new space, execuing a staircase and opening a single opening to link interior and paradise. A series of recovery operaions are carried out on this construcion; The enclosure is repaired by applying rendered lime mortar and troweled without mastering, in addiion to a new mini-wave sheet that prevents the entry of water and provides a scalar sense to the whole.

The new space is built looking at the material and typological memory of its past. For this, a lime mortar mixed with sandstone powder from La Rioja is used, which offers its unique toasted tobacco color. The mortar is applied with two techniques, the first of which passes the trowel in favor of the lime. Therefore, the stone material remains underneath, showing “the good face” of the mortar, which is reminiscent of the the windows ashlars in tradiional La Rioja and Casilla architecture. The second of the techniques carried out operates in the opposite direcion. In this way, the sandstone dust settles on top, consolidaing a rough appearance that recalls the old faces of the ashlars that build holes and sockets.

The structure, carpentry and cabinets are made enirely of ¨pino radiata¨ wood from the Basque Country. Likewise, the limestone that makes up the perimeter countertops or the stone slabs of the flooring comes from La Rioja itself, so all the materials that our context has at its disposal are used. The paio for Elena aspires to build an architecture that configures a kind of physical memory of the locaion. An architecture that, using shadow as a resource, configures a typological and materially unexpected space for Bañares.

Text provided by the architect.