X House: Amazing single family house in Barcelona

Designed by Cadaval & Solà-Morales. X House is an amazing single family house in Cabrils, Barcelona that has an unique X-shaped structure.

Follow the architects: The X House project aims to solve by the definition of a system, language, or even through a unique form, a number of enquiries that arise when we consider the given site: how to protect and give transcendence to an impressive pine, which is located on the top of the site and makes access to the house extremely complex from the street; how to avoid deciding between the views of the sea and those of the mountains, allowing both to be viewed in opposite directions; how to neutralize through form the presence of the adjacent buildings in order to create a feeling of isolation; how to allow quality views from both the front and the rear of the house; how to address so many requirements with a simple movement that answers all of the previous aims without prioritizing nor explicitly formulating a response to any of them. The form, a unique form, is the result of a long process of search for individual answers to each of those challenges; thus, the form is not a priori, but an effort to give a unitary response which satisfies each of these stipulations.

The X House is also a constructive exploration - a technique regularly used in infrastructural construction such as bridges and tunnels is here developed to meet the architectural scale, aiming to incorporate efficiency and reduce construction costs. The use of a mixed technique based on the application of high-density concrete allows the material to be projected using high pressure to a single-sided formwork, and to acquire substantial structural resistance in extremely short periods of time. Thus, it is possible to project continuous 6m high walls without the need to use a two-sided formwork (which would be the regular construction procedure). The house is therefore a living expression of a specific technique, and contains in its skin the diverse and continuous knowledge acquired within the process of construction.   

photos: Sandra. Pereznieto, Santiago. Garcés, Iwan Baan

keyword: single family home