House and Atelier for Lara Rios by F451 Arquitectura

Spanish practice F451 Arquitectura has completed a faceted house and studio for an artist that folds out from a hillside in Gijón, Spain (+ slideshow).

The two-storey residence is divided into four sections, which include living quarters, a double-height atelier, a guesthouse and a car parking garage.

A staircase stretches through the centre of the house and functions as a buffer between the home and studio, which sit on different storeys.

"The merging between the house and the atelier happens in such a way that every space has double orientation, lighting and ventilation," says F451 Arquitectura.

At the lower level, the double-height art studio is top-lit from a row of north-facing clerestory windows.

Corrugated metal panels are exposed on the ceilings of every room.

Rooms in the living quarters are arranged in a line, with an open-plan living and dining room first, followed by a storage area, a bathroom and a bedroom.

The garage is located underneath, while the guesthouse is positioned at the back of the studio.

Walls are constructed from plaster-covered clay blocks to help to keep the house insulated, plus a layer of grass covers the roof.

Other houses that include studios for artists include a rural wooden cabin in Nova Scotia and a building with a wall of wooden scales in South Korea.

See more artists' studios on Dezeen »

Here's a project description from F451 Arquitectura:

Single family house and atelier for the artist Lara Rios

This project hybridizes two typologies: the modern house and the industrial shed with north light from above. The program specificity, with 4 autonomous but interrelated units - house, guest apartment, atelier and garage- together with the slope from the terrain design the frame where we integrated both types into a single volume.

This integration modified the regular use of some of the spaces of the original type based in the new relationship with its immediate surroundings. The house does not land on the ground but changes the relationship with it as the plan progresses. The volume emerges from it in one of the extremes, aligns the house with the garden in the central area and finally detaches itself in the west side.

The open hallway that appears in the central area where the house and the atelier merge is designed as exterior and roofed space. It becomes the area of relationship of the different programs and works as a climatic regulator for them.

The energetic efficiency of the proposal and its landscape integration are two major considerations for the constructive solution of the project. The merging between the house and the atelier happens in such a way that every space has double orientation, lighting and ventilation. The construction is based on a metal corrugated plate exposed in the interior, with a thermal layer of 10cm that covers all the volume and with an exterior finished of flexible stucco on fiber reinforced resins. The vertical walls are made of honeycomb clay block that reinforce the thermal insulation from the outside and increases the interior thermal lag. In the guest apartment the thermal blanket is substituted by a garden roof that establishes continuity between the garden and the building and provides a similar insulation.

Above: concept diagram - click above for larger image

Architects: F451 Arquitectura: Santi ibarra, Toni Montes, Lluís Ortega, Xavier Osarte & Esther Segura
Design team: Juan Gándara, Oriol Vives, Jordi Ribó
Interior design; Laia Isern
Structure consultant: Manuel Arguijo
Quantity surveyor: José Piedra