The project seeks an approach that creates a union between architecture and place. Much of the theoretical foundation of architecture in the late 20th century developed around the concepts of type and place: the former has a strong relationship with history (understood as the immediate past), and the latter with the environment (climate, topography, local culture). The dialectic between the two generates architecture, a conception that distances us from the traditional approach of the Modern Movement (also embraced by the more recent “globalized architecture”), which advocated transplanted architectural solutions—something that can only amount to a cultural error.
Protection from the hot, dry Levante wind, the capture of humid, cool westerly breezes, and the protection from or capture of sunlight depending on the season, were decisive factors in designing the housing typology, which is nothing other than a reinterpretation of the traditional house with an interior courtyard: a compact row-house typology, with the main façade facing south and substantial protection from solar radiation.
The repeated spatial sequence proposed by the dwelling (open – closed), with a succession of three courtyards (north, covered central courtyard, and south), makes it possible to obtain spaces suited for use either at different times of the year or at different times of day within the same period.
The aim is to create a rational, economical, social, almost anonymous architecture, recovering the essential values of the local architecture and updating them with contemporary formal language and construction methods.