The Hidden House / Hombre de Piedra Arquitectos + Juan Ignacio Vilda Marín

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The solution was to design a contemporary capsule house, with all the qualities offered by today's industry and with an ‘A’ energy rating.Text description provided by the architects.The hidden house is a rehabilitation strategy for uninhabited inland Spain that is made viable through industrialised architecture. A logical and sustainable way to help solve the serious problem of the housing shortage in Spain. A dialogue between the most traditional and the most contemporary architecture, with the respect that comes from understanding that they are different realities. Although they are in dialogue, they cannot be confused. The people who live in them today are very different from the original farmers. The architecture cannot be the same.It is introduced by modules from the roof, leaving exciting transition spaces, like courtyards, between the stone building and the current one. The layout of the ensemble allows us to enjoy the ancient beauty of the original construction intact in an almost archaeological way.Manufactured in the place that has the appropriate means, projected using as a design and construction module maritime containers because they are the maximum volume transportable in a conventional way by road, which is important knowing the roads that lead to that town.With 78 inhabitants on the census,Medinillade Ávila had 3,000 inhabitants in the 1960s. The lack of labour in construction is immeasurable. The most feasible way for the family to rehabilitate this 200 year old Castilian cattle shed (it was never a house) to 21st century quality standards and at a reasonable cost was to ‘manufacture’ the house in a place where modern means of production were available.