Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

LGS House (Folded House)

This is a project by Manuel Cerdá Pérez | MCP Arquitectura + Julio Vila Liante and it is located at Forn-Massalfassar, Valencia, Spain. It was submitted to Architecture News Plus (ANP) by Manuel Cerdá Pérez | MCP Arquitectura. Project's program: Single family house. There are twenty seven images for LGS House (Folded House).

: © Joan Roig

Project details

Project name: LGS House (Folded House)
Location: Forn-Massalfassar, Valencia, Spain
Program: Single family house
Area: Site Area: 180 m2 • Built-up Area: 180 m2
Year: Completion: 2007
More details: Cost of Construction: 240,000 €
Client: Llúcia Gimeno Soro
Project by: Manuel Cerdá Pérez | MCP Arquitectura + Julio Vila Liante
Team: Principal Designers: Manuel Cerdá Pérez, Julio Vila Liante
Others: Surveyor: Miguel Monteagudo Cuevas • Contractor: Tapisa

Project images

Designer's statement

We were surprised by the unusual initial idea put forward by the client: "I would like to have a house the sun does not shine into". We did not have a previous programme, so we worked on the idea of architecture of feeling, space as landscape, all developed in a playful way.

We used very few elements: walls, glass, furniture and filters. The space is defined by manufactured exercises: folding, bending, looking for the emptiness between walls, slabs and ceilings, treated as 3D elements of equal value.

A walk around the perimeter wall explains how it turns and is transformed into a thin line of glass that protects a space in the inner part of the plot. Everywhere is the same. In or out are just physical states. Glass, as a minimum to keep a good temperature, disappears blending the house and courtyard into one.

The programme is defined placing the storage systems and services freely, as if they were lumps in this liquid space. Through their positions between the floor and ceiling planes we define different areas in a continuous fluid space.

The spatial continuity of floors and ceilings makes the dividing wall a part of the interior space and vice-versa. But it is not modern transparency. It is not. Here, the courtyard, as a thick perimeter space, of solid light, becomes part of the inside.

The house is adapted to the space by the wall bends on the dividing walls. Adjacent but detached at the same time, it becomes formally and conceptually independent from the built environment.