Ca La Maña
Housing
Client: Private
Location: Torrent (València)
Date: 2018
Team: Fent Estudi Coop. . (architecture), Ricardo Ortí (structural engineering), Miguel Navarro (direction of works), Blas Ramón S.L. (construction), Muycarp (carpentry)
Photography: Milena Villalba
When you finally have a home
That was what we felt the first day we saw it: that this was home.
It was dark and there were still old curtains hanging and traces of peeling wallpaper, not to mention the patchy repairs to the patio floor… but nevertheless it felt like home.
It isn’t easy to find architects who get this – who both respect the existing spaces and transform them, without this being a contradiction in terms. We wanted to keep the house as it was, full of memory and history, but at the same time, make it livable… make it our own. Light, silence, space for our books – but also the original tiles right up to the ceiling, the ruts left by carriage wheels in the stone paving, and the vast fireplace. Which still works by the way. It works fine.
We needed to be able to tuck ourselves away, to create a safe space for working and studying, a castle. And this is it. We don’t have a moat, but we have our neighbours and can hear the bell tower when it strikes the hour – things like that. But if and when you so choose, the world stays on the outside and you on the inside, at rest.
If we had to make a list of the things we love about our house, it would be neverending! We love it just as it is – that is to say, the bare bones of it, the stones if you like. We love its history and what has been made of it – the unusual diagonal kitchen, two large offices (separate but interconnected, a perfect mantra for living together), the irregular shape of the corral and the terrace warmed by the winter sun – everything.
Everything.
The stairs modelled by the steps of those who have gone before, the wooden beams, the lemon tree and a vine.
It’s not a picture postcard; it’s home.
