Project: FM Residence
Architects: Nacho Carbó del Moral
Technical architect: Alejandro Olmo Guillen.
Builder: ELO construcciones
Location: Alboraya, Valencia, Spain
Area: 325 sqm
Completed: 2021
Photography: Mariela Apollonio
The refurbishment of an old and long-time uninhabited house is an exciting exercise that implies the obligation of carefully reading the existing spaces in order to get them a new life. They will be the scene for its new inhabitants and their new ways of living. So, we will pay our attention to those elements keeping and whispering to us its high potential for the new architecture: the patios, the revoltones, the wood structure of the ancient roof…And so that, the first decision was to remove all the elements that had been carelessly added throughout the years with no respect for the house.
Finally, we added the new elements and spaces connecting the whole house with the aim of creating a comfortable contemporary house rooted in the place and in its history. The project, therefore, grew up creating dialogues. A dialogue between the small alberca (water tank) and the zenith lighting, a dialog between the ancient wood beams, the ramp and the new wood flooring, a dialogue between the library -which crossing vertically the space articulates the two floors – and the skylight, a dialogue between the central patio and the workshops and the kitchen, between materials, between different architectural and constructive details.
The FM Residence is articulated around three patios that sculpture an intimate space turned into itself. The central patio (the garden-patio) which articulates the living, the kitchen and the art workshops of the owner is conceived as a garden, as a green lung, the heart of the whole house. The second patio is the patio-alberca (small water tank) which is conceptually mineral, and which embraces and takes care of the more public spaces of the house with the presence of water.
Finally, the secret patio brings light and space to the master bedroom and bathroom. On the first floor, floating among the staircase, the patios, and the living void, we find the salle de musique, major space of the house devoted to the music where the designed two-stories library, the light coming from the different patios and the use of wood (the old and the new one) creates and form its intimate character and its secluded atmosphere.
FM Residence (or House with three patios) is a house conceived to be inhabited, to play and to listen to music, to create in its art workshops, to read pleasantly taking advantage of the natural lighting while contemplating the play of lights and shadows in their walls throughout the daytime.
