Before the intervention, the south-facing terrace of María José and Ernesto’s attic, adjacent to the living-dining room and the master bedroom - situated in a rationalist building by Manuel Cabanyes - with views over the Chamberí district of Madrid, was a space that was not sufficiently used, neither in winter nor in summer. Besides these exceptional starting conditions, the poor physical and visual contact between the interior and the exterior, due to the existence of a not very permeable wall, as well as the height difference between the terrace and the house (almost half a meter), caused the couple a certain physical and mental reluctance every time they wanted to go out for any activity. Thus, they considered it a lost space.
The assignment, besides being small (20 sqm), was a great challenge because our intervention depended on both María José and Ernesto recovering the desire to enjoy their terrace in all its potential, a well-desired and rare space in Madrid, thus transforming their relationship with the house.
The intervention on the terrace seeks to completely rearticulate the domestic space, from the access to the house and to the adjacent rooms, based on the definition of two very simple but forceful actions. On one hand, by leveling the living-dining room and the bedroom with the terrace in order to establish a continuous layout between the interior and the exterior; and, on the other hand, by perforating as much as possible the wall that connects the terrace with both spaces in order to bring in a greater amount of light and, incidentally, the city of Madrid.
The new fluid, continuous and permeable spatial situation of the house facilitates the construction of a green “backdrop” visible both from the bed and the sofa or the dining table. This continuous strip, as if it were a swimming pool, is built from a small 10 x 10 square ceramic in a Pantone poolgreen color, which seeks to recover the language and the original aesthetics of the nineteen-thirties house.
Depending on the position in the terrace, the strip transforms and mutates: while on the party wall it widens to contain a flower box with a wisteria, María José’s favorite plant, to provide shade on summer days. On the wall that overlooks the street, the strip is sometimes raised and used for flower pots, and at other times it becomes a bench to sit on to watch the light changes in the Madrid sky.
