Ramón y Cajal house

Building Between Party Walls in the Gracia neighborhood, Barcelona with a lot width of 4.50 meters and a buildable depth of approximately 11 meters, this building is constructed with a ground floor and two upper floors intended for residential use.

The program is that of a single-family home, but developed vertically across three levels. The ground floor includes the building’s entrance and the kitchen-dining area. The intermediate floors are dedicated to bedrooms and bathrooms, while the top floor contains the living room.

The staircase plays a crucial role in the configuration of this building, not only providing access to each floor, which are offset depending on their orientation towards the interior courtyard or the street, but also serving as a light well, covered by a skylight at the top level. Therefore, it needed to be a lightweight and transparent construction element. Additionally, this staircase doubles as the home’s library, with shelves extending from the ground floor up to the top floor.

Dividing the building in two by positioning the staircase transversely in relation to the lot’s depth results in separate rooms on either side of the staircase. The resulting room dimensions are well-suited to their intended use. However, for common areas such as the kitchen-dining area on the ground floor or the living room on the top floor, there is always the option to extend the space outward onto an exterior area, whether it’s the garden in the inner courtyard of the block or the terraces at the roof level.

What initially seemed like a disadvantage ultimately became a benefit. The narrow and deep lot, the party walls of neighboring buildings, and the party wall of the building on the other side of the block provided an entirely private character to the interior courtyard. This privacy in relation to neighboring buildings allowed the space to fully open to the courtyard, integrating the exterior space as if it were part of the interior. Of the total lot depth, half is built, while the other half is a vertical garden where plants, with their roots in the ground, fully cover the area. The result is an oasis, a lush garden, in the densely built neighborhood of Gracia.