This expansion and renovation project is located in a residential neighborhood of Palma with ground-floor houses and patios. The need to extend the original home on the ground floor, maintaining the original load-bearing wall structure, makes it necessary to adopt a light structural solution such as wood.

CRAFTS

From the beginning, we considered the project as an investigation along two parallel lines. On the one hand, the possibilities of prefabricating wooden elements with numerical control cutting (CNC), and on the other, an investigation into the crafts still alive on the island, such as clay and marés.

We start from an autonomous and decontextualized structure, anchored to a “base” or “pre-existence” for which we “ideate” and manufacture a prefabricated wooden system, starting from 244x122cm poplar plywood panels. Here the structure gives us the opportunity to investigate and test a wooden prefabrication structural system that uses the language of its manufacturing process. Combining the elements of this system defined by the capabilities of CNC cutting, this system serves as a starting point and can be reproduced in other types of buildings.

The project explores and incorporates local materials and artisans using local products with different degrees of industrialization. For the interior flooring, we worked hand in hand with Huguet, a traditional manufacturer of hydraulic tiles in Mallorca, designing a large continuous mosaic of tiles with smooth joints in the areas where it was necessary to replace the original flooring. Special terracotta slivers from Miquel Soler, a traditional manufacturer from Felanitx, have been used in various parts of the façade and the pool.

La entrada Plywood House se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

The Split house is located in a low and dense neighbourhood of the city of Palma, with predominant row houses with patios. The area was built to accommodate the workforce of the local industries of the early 20th century.

MONUMENTALITY
Workforce are documented in the region of thousands, defining an industrial zone within the city fabric. Accommodating such a large workforce required a large housing solution, as the migration from the countryside to the city was already beginning. Simple row houses were the common solution, but the area is also dotted with a typology of bourgeois villas for foremen and business owners. With their monumental proportions and ornate façades, they often involved local artisans to recreate the sense of urban palaces, where elevated living stepped out of the ordinary.
The Split house aims to contribute to this network of monumental buildings, through the language of the façade and urban proportions.

ADAPTATION
The topography of the entire area slopes continuously towards the sea, having to deal with level changes within the plot. There is a drop of 1.4 m from the street to the rear façade. The Split House progressively adapts to this level condition by stepping the ground floor, with a series of platforms of different levels, like a descending promenade, connecting the main street with the courtyard. This section is mirrored on the upper floor, composing two different levels that “split” the house, creating new facades where the light from the south is brought inside.

La entrada Split House se publicó primero en Global Spaces.