Girona, Spain
Located in a historical neighborhood in Olot, Spain, The Popular House is an unexpected residence by Arnau Estudi D’Arquitectura that creates its own presence in its context with a radical, statement-creating façade.
Behind the shiny metal facade, a house for a large family divides functional spaces across three levels.
Its sleek and minimal interiors are filled with light, and multiple levels create views to the outside or within toward communal spaces.
Back in the Olot of the 1920s, while Manuel Malagrida was building the Eixample Malagrida or “of the rich”, Rafael Arau was urbanizing the Eixample Popular, or “of the poor”.
In this neighborhood, between different typologies and gradients to be resolved, the designers of Arnau Estonia D’Arquitectura were asked to build a new house for a large family.
An omnipresent garage doorway in the project is a kind of strategy to mitigate its prominence.
And this is how one piece of machinery turned into a façade that neutralizes another, the car, while at the same time providing another peculiar character for the heterogeneity of this neighborhood.
A half-level difference between the street and the back garden leads to work area on semi-levels and turns the section into the main organizational and representational feature of the project.
The Eixample Popular now has new neighbors.
Meanwhile, the designer’s mother-in-law, who lives just behind it, looks at everything through the window; now that’s popular!
Project: The Popular House
Architects: Arnau Estudi D’Arquitectura
Client: Private
Photographer: Marc Torra
