El Molinot, 2022 (ongoing)
Renovation of a rural house in Riudaura, Girona.
The house had been reduced to an empty shell; only four walls and a roof remain from its original state. The original load-bearing stone walls had disappeared, replaced instead by a new steel-frame structure and brick wall to support the newly renovated roof. The juxtaposition of these seemingly opposing construction systems is unexpected from a modern perspective. However, they blend seamlessly with the other exposed materials, accidentally shaping the character of the space.
Renovation of a rural house in Riudaura, Girona.
The house had been reduced to an empty shell; only four walls and a roof remain from its original state. The original load-bearing stone walls had disappeared, replaced instead by a new steel-frame structure and brick wall to support the newly renovated roof. The juxtaposition of these seemingly opposing construction systems is unexpected from a modern perspective. However, they blend seamlessly with the other exposed materials, accidentally shaping the character of the space.
The perimeter walls still
bear the scars of past uses: on the ground floor, where animals were housed,
there are barely any finishes, while the upper floor, which housed the rooms
and more private spaces, exhibit remnants of a more domestic character. Brick
add-ons, plasterboard leftovers, concrete roof reinforcements, and apparently
old timber beams can be identified as areas of intervention from the previous
refurbishment in 2007, overlaying the existing house. But what truly
constitutes the ‘existing ‘ anymore? Is it relevant to differentiate between
the original and the new if the house has been drastically modified? Rather to
establish a criteria for determining what must stay and what must go, the
understanding of the house ‘as found’ might become a new language worth to
explore, a new strategy following a process already started.