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Casa Entre la Cuidad Carves Out an Existence in the City

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I know from experience that it can be quite a challenge to carve out a home from inside of the urban structure already forming the big cities of the world.

In Casa Entre La Cuidad, (“a home from “between” the city”) Fran Silvestre Arquitectos attempts to build a family home for a professional couple and their three children from inside the walls already created, in the city of Valerio, in Spain.

The original plan housed several apartments centered around a utility elevator and stairwell core with an awkward curved edge that must be retained – it is covered in the deep teak curved shelving seen above.

The architects remodel it in such a way as to grab every last bit of light form the far end of the building, by opening up the big window end.

The precious light is funneled through the master bedroom at the front; deep into the master bathroom inside the building.

It is a problem familiar to anyone who has attempted to build living space in a deep city loft, that has windows only at the front.

Like the bathroom, the kitchen must make do with borrowed daylight from the living room in front.

The curve of the original central core must stay.

Three children obediently buckle down to homework in the three back bedrooms opening onto no views. My sense is that these are three children who wear school uniforms, of whom much is expected: the home is all about discipline and orderliness.

Do they sneak into the kitchen (remember, it’s at their end of the home, far from their parents) and make a surreptitious peanut butter and jelly snack at midnight?

We’ll never know. But we can surmise that if they work hard, when they reach adulthood, they will then be able to afford to carve out their own future home just as austerely built into the city as their parents did before them.

Architects: Fran Silvestre Arquitectos