The four concrete wings of this house in Girona, Spain, appear to hover in the air above an underground entrance (photographs by Filippo Poli).
Completed in 2010 by Barcelona studio Hidalgo Hartmann, the single-storey Casa Pocafarina has a cross-shaped plan that sits on four pillars and hovers a metre above the lawn.
The underground driveway tunnels down beneath the floor of an en suite master bedroom to arrive at a staircase that ascends into the heart of the house.
Two children’s bedrooms and bathrooms are situated in the wing opposite, while a living room and a dining room occupy the remaining two sides of the cross.
A square courtyard surrounded by glass is concealed at the centre of a building.
Photographer Filippo Poli also shot a concrete centre for rescued turtles, dolphins and birds by the same architects - see it here.
Here's some more text from Hidalgo Hartmann Arquitectos:
Memory
The house is situated on a corner plot with some good views over the distant landscape.
In order to enjoy these views and avoid the neighboring buildings, the ideal configuration for the house was to create a compact form of cross which is placed at the center of gravity of the plot.
The four wings are oriented in a way that ensures the selected views from inside the house.
The whole volume is supported by four pillars and cantilevers out over the garden level at a hight of one meter.
The pillars itself are based on the lower ground floor of 8x8m that contains access to housing, the porch, garage and laundry.
On the top floor, the cross-shaped plan organizes the four wings around a central space, an exterior courtyard, that provides sunlight into the heart of the house.
The four wings contain the different functions of the house with the living room area and the kitchen-dining area connected with each other through the transparency of the courtyard.
Distributed on both sides of this main space there is the master bedroom with it’s own bathroom and the two children's bedrooms also with a bathroom hidden by a concrete wall.
The use of concrete in its natural colour and made with wood slats all over the house reveals visibly the powerful construction that is needed to realise the idea in a coherent way.
Authors of the project: HIDALGO.HARTMANN, Jordi Hidalgo Tané, architect, Daniela Hartmann, interior designer.
Technical Architect: Rafel Serra Torrent, Technical Architect.
Collaborators: Torrent Rafel Serra, Technical Architect, Ana Roque, architect.
Promoters: Xevi Bartrina i Alba Sarola.
Construction: Estructures Olot S.L (concrete) LI-BRA S.L (general constructor) Fusteria Serra (Word furniture) Plantalech (Aluminium charpenter) Cuines Santi, Olot (Kitchen) Electrica Masaló (fluids instalation) Electricitat Quim (electrical instalation)
This is beautiful! Personally, I would live in a house like this! <3
Would happily live there. Although I'd warm up the inside a touch… put in some great Nordic furnishings.
sorry to say, but looks like a fancy concrete jail to me. visible concrete everywhere, a bit cold and slightly depressing. the garden fence is not helping.
…and there is no photo of the courtyard???
Very well done, but I think the bedroom is a bit too exposed. Just imagine that ……
It's well detailed and done, but it reminds me a little be too much of a WWII bunker perhaps because of how it's positioned on the site and how you access the building from underneath.
Imagine winter there …. brrr
The passing cars can see inside the house through at least two directions: in some months they will decide to put curtains, that are never going to be opened. And the park under the house, in a garage that is likely to be innundated in heavy rains…
Should have a green roof to keep it cool in summer
exactly my thought
makes sense
the floorplan isn't perfect for me. i appreciate a courtyard a lot, but this one seems to have just one opening, is it? why? it should be the central space for the family! 2 bathrooms with no openings. considering that this is a single house i would prefer a light space here. and the parking lot in the basement, but here you have big windows? i don't get it.
This is a simple and modern design very nicely done, but this is a corner lot and since there are two larger windows exposed to the road…. not a lot of privacy.
The distance between the two children's bedrooms couldn't be wider, and the parent's bedroom is in the middle of the house – that doesn't make much sense.
If the architect just changed the two bedroom sections with eachother then this house would be really practical and there would even be the "circle" floor plan which would work in this case.