Spanish practice SAU Taller d’Arquitectura has renovated and extended the Sant Daniel House, a tiny 3.5 metres wide home sandwiched between party walls.
From the architects, “The main aim of the refurbishment is to improve habitability conditions through low-cost measures with a minimal environmental impact. The challenge to organise the functional program of a room with a width of 3.75m and depth of 12m derives from working transversely on the façades, with a sequential organisation of the areas, making circulation areas disappear while lengthening visuals.
Emptying the initial volume from the two, interior courtyards, allow new visual relations between areas, providing natural light to all the rooms and guaranteeing a good climatic behaviour: crossed ventilation, Venturi effect…
All the used materials, such as the the wooden-roof structure, the new floor slabs, wood fibre insulation, enclosures of pine as well as indoor claddings of fir and the paintings, have almost zero impact and are non-harmful. The result is a raw, neutral, site-specific architecture, allowing the user, objects and time to give it its own character.”
