House with garden and a facade built from stone from Sant Vicenç and Sate.

A family with two children commissioned us to design this house after deciding to move to the heart of the countryside, but in a location that is still relatively close to the city centre.

They asked us for a comprehensive functional layout, despite having to deal with excessively strict urban planning regulations that significantly limited the use of the plot.

The house is built across three floors that are interconnected internally. The basement floor is used as a car park and utility room; the ground floor comprises of the daytime living areas, and the bedrooms are located on the first floor.

The landscape, the views and the surrounding nature all call for a house that allows you to appreciate the greenery outside. For this reason, the ground floor of the house has been designed to be very open to the outside space, creating fluid transitions between the inside and the outside. On the first floor, horizontal outdoor terraces and strategically placed windows are incorporated to frame the landscapes and enhance the views in both directions, along the north/south axis.

The house is arranged along the north/south axis, with closed side walls to ensure privacy and security. The ground floor has been designed as an open space in which the different rooms connect to each other seamlessly. The two terraces linked to the kitchen, one facing north and the other south, extend the space of this area, offering greater integration with the surroundings.

A double height wall presides over the dining room, providing intersecting views between the floors.

The entire exterior foundation is made from textured concrete walls clad with reeds, which also appear in some areas of the ground floor. The horizontal structure of the house is made of exposed hollow core slabs, painted in off-white.

For the exterior, the owners wanted a simple and discreet façade, but with a certain degree of sophistication. The façade combines concrete walls that are textured at the bottom with Sant Vicenç stone and continuous off-white cladding.

The owners of this house value practicality, abundant natural light and contact with the natural world, which are the main reasons why they decided to build a new home.

They chose to name the house "White Wagtail" in honor of the bird species that frequently visit their garden.