At the extreme end of each of the three buildings, there is a penthouse formed through the flow of the slab floor toward the rear facade, bounded at the top by the structural tray, which becomes another pergola with an exposed concrete structure on the sides with the highest projection. The project is complemented by a communal swimming pool through a vertical connection by means of an elevator integrated into the rear containment of the three blocks, generating a garden space on a slope where the bedrooms of the houses look out.
66 apartments with terraces by Estudio Muñoz Miranda. Photograph by Javier Callejas Sevilla.
Description of project by Muñoz Miranda Studio
The 66 apartments with terraces are arranged in three longitudinal volumes with three storeys, which are broken up to adapt to the sloping terrain of a hillside facing the Mediterranean Sea. Two of the buildings fold into their central axes of communication, making them traversable, in order to fit the topography and have a view of the sea. The third block is separate, thus freeing the facade and making it more permeable. The zigzagging volumes form a residential development's second phase with a communal swimming pool and gardens. The shape of the blocks gives them movement that is also conferred, like a ripple effect, to the terraces and the running second-floor pergolas, creating an apparent continuity of movement between the flow of the buildings and the inward and outward projections of the tray-like terraces and pergolas made of exposed concrete.
Within each block, the apartments are stratified, as if the building were an exposed porticoed structure, stacking the upper floors like concrete trays. Thus, the first floor is developed with a front garden, making a porticoed porch with an exposed concrete structure. This level is raised above the gradient of the street in order to create a base using a concrete wall that contains the gardens, giving them privacy from passers-by. On the first floor, the apartments are supported by the porticoed frame structure, making extensive terraces. Regarding the second floor, the structure gives an allusion to the exposed concrete trays that form the lateral and rear projections, which become zigzagged on the main façade. The terraces are made in this way, on top of which an exposed concrete pergola is constructed, which matches the rest of the building trays, enhancing the staggered movements in the opposite direction, and thus providing different relationships with the sky. A staircase climbs from the second-floor terraces, leading up to sun decks that are independent for each apartment. On the top of each building, there is a penthouse at either end, formed through the flow of the slab floor toward the rear facade, bounded at the top by the structural tray, which becomes another pergola with an exposed concrete structure on the sides with the highest projection.
At the base of the buildings, a lengthwise underground car park has been constructed. This garage, along with private storage rooms, can be accessed directly from the centres of each block. This phase of the housing development has the addition of a communal swimming pool, reached via a lift built into the rear retaining walls of the three buildings, creating a sloping garden space that the apartment bedrooms look out upon.
The premise behind the outward appearance of the project is that the final image is the exposed structure itself, along with a single layer coating texturized with a vertical stripe and enhanced by its joints. This is thus the encapsulation of the idea: the structural trays in front of the enclosure bounded between these horizontal bands, bearing in this way all the metalwork of the bedrooms from floor to ceiling in vertical strips.
