Description of the proyect by School of Architecture at the University of Toledo
The house at callejón de Menores 12 is a courtyard house with many elements of interest, dating from the first- through the twentieth-centuries. This project set out to establish innovative criteria for historic building renovation. The fundamental goal was to reactivate the residential fabric of the historic centre with new uses: generate new design methods for historic buildings, transmit knowledge to the participating students and define other approaches to renovation ranging from project management to actual construction, which could be exported as models for other situations in the city. Regarding the interventions, the first was to insure the stability of the structure by adding an exoskeleton that supports the existing structure, without removing anything. The intervention is accomplished while conserving the form and textures of the existing construction elements, maintaining the possibility to read each moment of the house’s history. Only reversible, dry-mounted construction systems are used.
