Turns warehouse into dream home with underground living + Roman bath 🏛️

The place where we are going now, when I was a student, I saw it, but I was thinking that one day, maybe... Now we are entering a place that is called El Pueblito, El Poplet, because it is the last area that remains in the old town, which is maintained more or less as it was a hundred years ago. All this were cultivation fields. Here we have vegetables, something like that. That's the place. This place has a history. It's from 1924. This was the factory where they stored the grain. So when we found this façade, it was practically destroyed. You see here, it's just the old barn roof. Yes. You can imagine that, right? This is all original. I had an obsession when I entered this place. When we entered here, it was a very dark place. I don't know why, but the place had something that caught us at that time. One, two, three, four platforms. We have four levels. There are no doors here. There are only doors in the bathrooms. And these four platforms give a certain privacy with the levels. This is not finished yet. And then it's almost, it feels like you have a pool here, but it's glass. But it does look like water. It's almost like calm. This was a last-minute decision. Because I was obsessed. I came here at night after work. I sat down, I lay down, I felt the place. I was downstairs and I said, Wow, there's something missing here. I can't have a basement downstairs. And these lanterns that we see here are existing. This was already in the house. So that night I thought, Man, what if I make a projection of the lantern I have upstairs so that when I'm downstairs I don't feel like I'm in a basement. And that at a certain moment, if I lie down at night, I can even see the stars. That normally a basement, everyone associates it, which is something dark, unhealthy. Look at the temperature change here. It feels good down here. It's nice to have lots of levels for different weather, right? What a temperature change there. As you can see. This right now for us is the oasis. Because it's the only place in the house where we are fine all day. Even at night we sleep covered. It's amazing, we sleep covered here. Because this, if you realize, the limits of the walls are inside. They are not right with the house. Here you can see it better, in the lantern. I'm separated from the walls. The house is separated from the walls. This level here, 60 centimeters. Because I wanted to be conservative in this sense, to try not to touch too much of what was already there. So this space, which was a completely diaphanous space, already allowed it to be like this. We make this in the last minute. Because when you put it here at night, it's really interesting. Put it there. You can see the sky from here. And it's really, really, really interesting. It's another perception. I never felt that perception. So in a way you went underground to create this space. Of course. This place did not exist. So were you thinking about extreme weather, like when it was hot or cold, that you wanted a place like this that would be protected by the earth? Well, it's the concept of a cave, in the end. Cave. What is a cave? A cave is a place that helps you to be climatically well. Why? Because you have a controlled temperature of both the ground and you are protected from the sun. Then it has the singularity that it is a space that is underground, but that has ventilation and then it is open. The famous cross ventilation so that the air runs and you have that feeling of well-being in the end. Because normally when you go to bed, you go to sleep, you don't have the sky in your head. I feel really, really good with that feeling. So was this a functioning part of the granary? I mean, was this where they kept certain grain or fruits or things that needed to be kept colder? This place doesn't exist. Oh, it didn't even exist? Oh, you dug it out. This concrete has a peculiarity and since I didn't have the economic capacity to be able to do it, seeing that it was perfect and so on, I did it with normal and cheap planks. And then what did I do? I bought a drilling machine and I put a circular head on it and I made it this texture that is called beveled. This is as if you were removing material and it is as if you were digging in the ground. And I wanted to get this feeling that when you came in here, you would notice that you were under the ground. And you did this? I did this with my hands. Just like this floor, I put it all with my hands. All this metal, I put it with my hands. You placed each piece? Yeah. Wow. Think that each sheet of this, the one that weighs the least, weighs 40 or 50 kilos. So these measurements are determined by the maximum weight that I could take. So now you see... Well, you don't see actually, but I'm guessing you said there's a bathroom back there? We have a bathroom here. This element has an intention. This element, in the end, is a closet. But this closet has a reason. And it is that behind it hides a bathroom that is open. Now we're going to see it, okay? In this bathroom, you can access it through two areas. Through area number one, which is the laundry area, where you're going to wash your hands. Okay? And surrounded by natural material. Like you feel it's all earth around you, right? It's the same material. It's so hot that the water is even warm now. This light, what it does is, to turn on this little closet, and the perimeter lighting, which is a crack here on the wall. This could be another time period. Like with this earthy... Yeah. But it's really simple at the end, eh? This is a plate with a steel geometry. A stainless steel pipe that is embedded in the wall. And little else. Here you wash your hands, okay? On the other side is where you bathe. You shower and bathe. And showering and bathing for me is a sequence too, okay? You come in through here, to the closet, and you have the toilet. It's an excavation that's inside all this volume. Where we have all the pieces, the light, here's a plug back here. You touch it, but you can't see it. Okay? You get here, and you have this first piece. This first piece is a shower. You can shower here. You sit down quietly with your patio, which will one day be green. You'll have the vegetation up here, and you'll have a nice relationship, I think, with the outside. Okay? And then, if you want to shower or bathe, because it's very hot in summer, you take it, and you turn here. You turn, you have one level, and another level. And it's a little climate shelter, as they say today. It's almost like a Roman pool. It's a perfect pool. You said it right. And do you leave water here, just so it keeps it... Like, if you leave some water here, it keeps it cooler, right? The air comes across. Okay? What they do is that, in the end, there's air flow here. This comes out, and it doesn't condense here, in the interior, all the humidity. So it works like... It's a pool. That's what the Romans used. In the end, it's a Roman pool. Another interesting thing is that you didn't want to make a separation here that would make the space smaller. This height is defined by the human body. Okay? Why? Because, if you notice, I'm here now, okay? I'm going up, but if I take a shower, all I see is my head. You see my neck up. So this height is defined by the angle from the sofa to be able to see the windows and the relationship I have with the human body. Well, I can be like this, and here, at some point, I can put some element to take a shower, but, well, I can disappear too, because if I sit here, I open my tap, I listen to the water a little bit, which relaxes me a lot when I open the tap. I really love this noise. It's really a refuge, because you're hidden here, without seeing anything of the same color. It's cool, because it doesn't give you the feeling of a bathroom, right? You could almost be in natural rock, you know, like bathing in rock, in nature. It's natural. It's a natural element. Build natural element. And then, there are these last elements here. It's a technical and aesthetic resource at the same time. Why? Because, aesthetically, it also gave me an order in this whole room, but, constructively, it was going very well for me. Why? Because this ceiling is made manually, and when you work manually, you have to be able to work with how the materials dry. So, if I was able to delimit the work areas, I could do one day, this one here, and these two pieces here, and the next day, the next ones. So, you never saw the joints between the materials. But, I haven't seen any. I thought, either he did it with a machine, or really... This is all handmade. You have a surprise here, what's there? Here, behind, there's a toilet. You have the toilet. So, it's just completely enclosed. It's not just... Yeah. And you have your own wall. You don't just use the curtain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has its external ventilation, mechanical, and it's a piece that, normally, you have to try to separate it when it makes such open places. And here are the guts of the house. But, here's the washing machine, the machine, the machine that pumps the water, aerothermia, there are forecasts so that one day there may be solar panels. You see? This gives you some privacy. And the problem that this house also has is that, as it's all made of iron, now, as we've been integrating textiles and furniture, the echo has been disappearing little by little. At first, there was a lot of echo. Now, there's still some, but there's less. This is all new. You just moved in here, what? Two weeks ago, you said? Right? Two weeks ago, we were living here. I've been obsessed with the project since I wanted that, from any point of the house, or from any point of the place, everything could be seen. And I didn't want to touch the existing things, because these walls are original. These walls, when we came in here, these walls were all painted white with plastic paints. I rented a sandblasting machine a weekend after work, and with a thermal spear, I was sandblasting all this, there are still paint remains. And then, when the machine was finished, of all this brick. So, you did it yourself, Myself, on a weekend. I mean, all this house, with the help of my family, obviously, I came one Friday in the afternoon to work. We started, and on Monday at six in the morning, I had to return the machine I had rented. Here, in the end, this has been more important than almost the five years of my studies. Because here, look, I'm an architect, I'm a builder, and I had to build a large part of the house because there are a lot of things that practically nobody supported me. So, instead of just playing the architect and just hiring people just to do the hard work, so you really learned in this project. Because you can't touch the things. This house is made in a natural way, naturally, and with bricks. And here, they had used the earth and the stone of the river, Yobregat, and this texture that we have here This is a lime mortar that is all handmade, and with the grain of the river this texture This house is made with 100% recycled materials, and the steel is recycled from a project that I did, that a client had a warehouse with a hill that had some iron sheets from 50 or 60 years ago that are all these sheets that you see here. All these sheets that you see here in the gaps are the original sheets that I cleaned. I cut it, and after that I put it here. The good thing about this material is that, depending on how the light hits it, the shade changes. Now you're seeing it like this, but in the morning you'll see it green, in the afternoon you'll see it pink. So, you have here the kitchen. Yes. I didn't want the things you see here in the kitchen Because when you enter the house, this is like the receiver of the place. What the oven tries to do is to integrate it inside a closet, with the minimum possible means so that this is somehow the most integrated. This is the table that we use every day to eat, have dinner, and do everything. It's piled up on the wall and this table is flying. It's flying. That's what I was going to ask you. Where's the leg? All of this here is piled up. It flies two and a half meters. Here you can sit perfectly on the tip and this doesn't move. So, it's basically there is no leg underneath. Everything is floating. You have here the fluence to move wherever you want it and you don't have everything on the floor. I was trying to express the maximum We have here a continuity wall with the same material that we have in all the places. That's a recycled steel. Really subtle, but that works, right? What is this? This is also a limestone or sand? I wanted to have the feeling of the same tonality that we have on the walls. The Romans already used it, which is a natural liquid, which is to dilute lime with a transparent liquid and that creates like water. So, with this I took the mop This is called jabelga. It's a paint that was used 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. It's 100% natural. It's limestone with marble, with marble sand. So it looks very sophisticated, but it's actually a technique that comes from ancient times. I don't make here any invention. Ok? This here is exactly how the bricks were built with what was done in these houses and many others 100 years ago. It is built and molded by hand and then it has been baked in an oven that is fed with natural wood and coal. I was looking and looking and looking for original bricks. I found a man and he made me these bricks that what they do is regrow the original pillar that if you see it is here in the middle the same mortar of lime with ground engraved so I don't know what to build all these perimeters that we see in the house. What function does all this have? Because in a place where there are no walls all this behind is full of installations. At the beginning everyone who came here said, but this wall are you going to leave it like this? This is made of dust. How is this going to look like this? And the cracks? And you have to cover this. And for me it is very important to understand the passage of time in things. Things are born, develop and die. And this the beautiful thing that it has for me is that it has the story that it explains that this plot in its day was not like this. Because this wall was built later and this plot reached the end. Here you can clearly see that there is the hole of a door because here there was a giant oven that was controlled from here. People tell me, man, how are you going to leave this? And that window? Well, yes, for me it's funny that this is like this because it explains the process. You have to assume the imperfection of things. Do you remember that I explained to you that this was a barn that had the main house at the end of the street? There were fields and here they kept the grain. How did they connect in the fields? Here was the door that connected with the fields where they arrived and kept all the grain and these were some windows that I understand that gave ventilation for the fruit and the vegetables that they had. Then, instead of covering them, I decided to take these holes, leave them as part of the history of the place and place these sheets that one day could be used to paste things. Yes, it's like they are canvases. They look like almost canvases, They are like canvases. My mother, when she comes here, always tells me, you have to put a bed up here. It's the place that she likes the most in the house. It's a place that is completely diaphanous. It's a piece that has nothing. It's unfinished, obviously. What's here? Here is a flying table from end to end. It's only supported in this end and in that end. If you look, all this down here is empty. There's nothing for you to move along the whole table. One thing that I like a lot is that things are not only useful, but a railing that can be used for many things. It can be a table, it can be a seat where I can talk to you. Well, a lot of things. One thing that is super nice about this place is that you can touch what already existed. And you have a super cool perception of, for me, the most expressive and powerful part of the whole house, which is this roof. You can touch it. Normally, in this type of space, you can't feel it. You don't touch the wood, you don't touch the touch, you don't see how it qualifies, how it heats, how it cools. And this is super cool for me. So it gives you a very different Completely natural. Look at that. All of this is... What is that? Bugs? Or is it... Maybe. Who knows? But we make a... How do you say that? A treatment. You treated it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we have lighting from these walls here that illuminate the space on the wall. And then we have another lighting which is the one in the arches that illuminates the whole house. So at night, this has a very cool because this light is sifted on the walls and makes you see light. It illuminates the whole environment but you really don't see where the light All this floor is actually steel. It's the same steel as this? It's all the same? It's the same but it's different because this it's completely cleaned. That's why it has this texture, okay? And of course, a sheet on the floor that is completely smooth, you imagine it would always be all dirty, stained, marked. It's delicate in itself. So, this granulated that the sheet has makes that when you put your fingers or have certain imperfections like for example here, you see that it's all full of scratches and so on. Well, it's matted and that's it. Nothing happens. It's the same material with all the possible records but in the end it's with the minimum and with the same material to do it all. Lighting, furniture, structural pieces, flooring, lining, lighting sheets, even furniture. That sheet, that table you see there, that box, is a piece of sheet that I have left over. So you make furniture too? Yeah. You're doing it all. I have to learn how to weld. I don't know how to weld so when I learn how to weld I'll have the complete pack already. I love this window. It's the window that we have here. We change only the glass and the floor Now that we're in the middle of summer and the heat is unbearable, this window is always 100% open. You haven't seen the bathroom at the entrance. The bathroom at the entrance. The bathroom at the entrance is all this space that we see here. This place can be closed and you can give it privacy. You open this door that goes behind the kitchen modules and here we have on one side a toilet and then we have this thing. This is a hand wash that allows you to wash your hands on both sides. You can be washing your hands here on both sides in the hand wash. When the vegetation grows, I think it will give some privacy. But we'll see. If at some point we see that it doesn't work and it has to be a more standard and closed space, maybe we can put some element here and the problem is over. The lights. It's night and you come here for example and when it's all dark you have a light here that only lights your hands. So you're in the dark but you see that you don't wash your hands. This, how beautiful it is, is the feeling I had when you go to the field to wash your hands or to the forest and you go to the dark and the feeling is super cool. The same thing happens here with the toilet. The toilet has only one specific light. It's this dot. This dot, at night, only lights you when you're sitting here and it's lighting you. And it's good. I think it's very good. A lot of details. We have it. This is cool and the process of these windows was a mess because think that all the work of this house was done by that door that is there. And here, well, to put these glasses the street stopped with a pen and everything was coming over the roof. Each window weighs approximately 300 kilos. 300 kilos? 300 kilograms So it's over 600 pounds each one of them. And it's 7 by 10 feet each one of them. So did you put most of your money into these windows? I mean, this must have been the most expensive thing in the house, right? I was lucky that while I was doing all this I was doing projects. I have a very good relationship with the industrialists normally. So they make me human prices. They're not the most comfortable in the world but well, they do the job that I wanted the maximum glass space possible. A floor has to be very rigid and has to have very specific uses. The place where we live has to have a very specific utility of three rooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a dining room. Well, it depends. It depends on how you live. It depends on the utility you want to give that place and that life changes so much. Today I'm one way, but 10 years ago I was completely different. Today I live in a way that surely in 10 years I won't be like that.