Piazzetta housing

Doubling the surface of Reguereta Square thanks to a generous entrance porch

In the historic core of the medieval town of Balaguer, 22 social dwellings fit in a plot facing the little “Reguereta” Square and a 2m narrow street. An heritage (now unused) public sink, where women met once to wash clothes and talk with each other, the “reguereta”, gives its name to the square. Balaguer’s medieval center is very dense, with very few public spaces. In order to provide more public space, an entrance porch is carved into the mass of the building that almost doubles the surface of the square, generating a small piazza or “piazzetta”.
The porch, which incorporates a large sitting bench, will be a sheltered place in the hard winter, and a place to gather in the hot but dry summer, thus becoming a social focus again, recovering the liveliness of the times when people came to wash their clothes and chat around the “Reguereta” sink.

Voids + textures
Integration in the urbanscape

Ordered and disordered openings in the walls and a wide range of stucco coatings applied with subtly different tecniques and with different states of weathering are typical features of the old neighbourhood urban elevations. The proposal incorporates these features, and experiments with stuccos with touches of steel particles, which will rust and provide a speedy ageing.

A Mediterranean spatial gradient: piazzetta / patio / footbridge / home / roofgarden

A “Mediterranean” spatial sequence is proposed, from the more public to the more private. A generous and well-lit light and ventilation patio is the core of the proposal. A roof garden planted with local trees and vegetation that don’t need maintenance provides a communal solarium and a place to look over the lovely roofscape of the old town center.

Passive -low energy- climate control strategies

The entrance porch provides a shaded place in the summer to gather, sheltered from the sun, and in winter an entryway protected from the rain. A maximum of dwellings -four out of six per floor- are oriented south in order to maximize solar exposure in winter. In summer, the traditional Catalan rolling blinds provide shade in order to minimize solar gains and provide privacy. All apartments have two facades in oposed orientations, thus enabling natural cross-ventilation which provides healthy interior air-renovation and a cooling breeze in summer.

Each apartment has a terrace that doubles as a wintergarden in winter, providing additional inner room and a climate buffer space. These constructionally simple, low-cost, low-maintenance, durable, traditional strategies enable a high degree of energy efficiency and, at the same time, a formal and material dialogue with the historical surroundings.