The Llana house designed by Héctor Navarro + arkhitekton is a house that explores contemporary solutions to value the vernacular. The house is located in the Spanish town of Lamadrid, in the municipality of Valdáliga, in Cantabria.

The project is based on the typology of the typical Cantabrian house. And it is represented both in the morphology and in the materials used in the construction. The Lana house is a house that adapts to the rural landscape trying to maintain the urban identity of the place.
The Llana house designed by Héctor Navarro + arkhitekton is a house with a gabled roof and a predominant longitudinal morphology. Two stone masonry gables configure the construction. However, the east and west facades feature glass and wood.

The common areas are organized in a partially glazed sunroom, the private ones are located in parallel. The entrance is articulated by a kind of wooden box that houses the installation room. Between the porch and the living room is the fireplace. The kitchen and dining room form a whole. And in parallel, there are two bathrooms and three bedrooms. Access from the common areas is done by avoiding corridors.
 

Description of project by Héctor Navarro + arkhitekton

The rural landscape of Cantabria presents very unequal situations. During the last decades, some areas have been negatively affected as a result of a rapid growth, while others have managed to preserve their urban identity shaped by the vernacular architecture of the place, mainly built in stone, wood and sloping red ceramic tile roofs.

The project starts from a previous investigation on the Llana house, an exercise that aims to explore contemporary solutions that value the vernacular. This typology is identified in dwellings. It is a single-storey dwelling built between two stone gables and a gabled roof. Spatially, the solana is the most characteristic spatial resource of the Llana house. It is a covered space located in the sunniest orientation, destined to the development of all those activities that take place outdoors, agricultural and livestock.

The project starts from the scheme of this typology. A gabled house is projected, with a marked longitudinal character. To the north and south, two masonry gables frame the construction, reserving the east and west facades for glass and wood solutions. Both gables have different gaps that manage to colonize the north and south sides.

The private rest spaces are located in the west band and In parallel, the common areas organized in a hybrid solana partially glazed. The porch is located on the south facade, while the north is used as the entrance area to the house. Between one and the other, living room, dining room and kitchen. This continuous space and the entrance are articulated by a closed wooden box that houses a facility room.

In order to be able to understand the common areas as a solana, it is necessary to project a continuous space defined by a glass facade with hidden frames and coincident joints with the structure of wooden pillars on the facade that intends to disappear. Between the porch and the living room, a black volume houses the fireplace, allowing to organize the furniture facing the outside and take in the views of the spectacular surroundings. The island kitchen and the dining room form a set that, together with the mirrors on the back wall, reintroduce the surrounding landscape into the interior.

In parallel to this band, three bedrooms and two bathrooms are arranged. Access is made from the common areas, avoiding corridors and articulating the different areas within this continuous space. In the longitudinal axis of the house a mezzanine is projected whose use changes depending on the type of room it complements.

At a construction level, a traditional system is recovered consisting of assembling light wooden frames with integrated insulation. The roof is built using a self-supporting panel system with polyurethane insulation on which a ventilated flat tile roof is installed on battens. The high degree of insulation, the orientation study, the compact nature of the construction and the installation of an aerothermal equipment complete a home with almost zero consumption that aims to be a sustainable proposal in which the traditional and contemporary construction systems merge.

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Area
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143 sqm.
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Dates
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2020.
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Location
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Lamadrid, Valdáliga. Cantabria, Spain.
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Héctor Navarro (1986) is an architect and holds a PhD cum laude from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He received an extraordinary award for his doctoral thesis "Symbiosis and boundaries between architecture and contemporary urban spaces". He is associate professor at ETSAM and CSDMM (Polytechnic University of Madrid). He carries out his professional and research work from Madrid and Cantabria.

The architectural firm was founded in 2014 after winning the competition for the construction of  Tetuán-Amaliach Square. It has also won other competitions such as  Fuente Real  Square (Comillas). The office is currently developing projects in Madrid and Cantabria.

Since 2007, he has collaborated with Manuel Blanco, director of the ETSAM, designing and curating exhibitions and museum installations. "Grandes Encuadernaciones" (Madrid Royal Palace), "Campo Baeza, the creation tree" (MAXXI-Rome, Gallery MA-Tokyo), "Una ciudad llamada España" (Pinacoteca Nacional-Athens, Central House of Artists-Moscow).

Since 2014, he has been collaborating with the architectural studio ARKHITEKTON for the development of projects in Cantabria.
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Published on: March 29, 2022
Cite: "Maintaining the identity of the place. Llana House by Héctor Navarro + arkhitekton" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/maintaining-identity-place-llana-house-hector-navarro-arkhitekton> ISSN 1139-6415
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