The Esteve Arrufat house is
situated in the oldest part of Girona’s Barri Vell (Old District) inside the
area of the first ramparts. Its location on calle Alemanys is special as it
stands in front of one of the old fates of the wall, the Rufina gate, which
provides views from the house to the convent of Sant Domènec and from there to
the house, with the vision of the Cathedral as a backdrop. Although it is
difficult to determine the antiquity of the built bodies, the most important
reform dates from the sixteenth century. It later underwent many other reforms
and additions that disfigured the original volumetry.
The site consists of a
built body and a lateral garden with the façade giving on to the street. Two
centrelines structure the building, one giving on to the street and another one
to the interior part of the plot, with crossed facades giving on to the
courtyard and garden. A large covered porch, or “badiu”, crowns the street
façade and is one of the most characteristic elements of the house. In the
courtyard, an old cistern collects rainwater from the roof.
The reform has been
approached as a search for the most intrinsic characteristics of the actual
construction, while the building is freed of additions, surface elements and
recent reforms, interpreting the old elements not so much through an historical
optic as through their architectural qualities.
The new layout respects the
logic of the structure to adapt it to the new functional requirements. On the
ground floor, from the main door, the vestibule and small premises are
accessed, on the first floor are a dwelling with an exit to courtyard and
garden, and the second and third floors accommodate a duplex dwelling, with the
night zone in the lower floor and the living room and kitchen in the upper
floor to provide vistas and a roofed terrace.
The project is organised
around the two centrelines that structure the floor plan. The staircase has
been shifted to place it next to the lift, in the interstitial space between
the two directional lines of the centrelines. This space is configured as the
hinge that generates the entire layout.
The refurbishment has been
undertaken with very few materials: iron, concrete and oak wood. The forgings
are exposed. They are in concrete with wooden shuttering, or wooden beams and
beam fillings for the roof. Lintels and crowning of the stone walls are
executed in steel sheeting one centimetre thick. The staircase and lift space
is lined in Corten steel panels to differentiate it as a hinge space. The
floors of the staircase and front centreline are covered in wooden floorboards
and those of the back centreline in polished concrete. The stone walls are
exposed both in the exterior and in the interior, with special attention paid
to the texture, colour and execution of the joins. The facing stones of the
demolished constructions are recovered for cladding the cistern courtyard. It
was sought to preserve the natural colour and texture of the materials in order
to better integrate them with the colour and texture of the stones.
The garden, framed by tall
stone walls, is formalised into three consecutive planes that go from hardest
to softest: concrete, turf and water. The paved zone contiguous to the house is
in planed concrete and is covered by a set of cables on to which the wisteria
can climb. The plane of turf, finished off with a steel profile, floats above
the water of the pool. It is like a dark, long reservoir that overflows and
disappears, reflecting the neighbouring wall.
View Original