This project —the bouyant house— extends a small house located in a residential area in the city centre of Madrid. The original two-storey house is extended vertically adding two new storeys: a new basement and an attic. The objective is to reactivate the indoor-outdoor relationship which the original house once hampered.

The design strategy is double fold. On the one hand an impeccable outdoor façade restoration is undertaken. This has involved traditional building trades, from carpenters to blacksmiths and stonemasons. The objective is to restore the façade to its original state when it belonged to the Unión Eléctrica Madrileña neighborhood. An existing creeper —a vine trellis— has been preserved throughout the works.

On the other hand the extension has been built using contemporary lightweight building systems —sunspots and staircase skylight— with differentiate the new additions from the massiveness of preexistences. These new glass pieces collect solar radiation and activate the thermal mass of the existing house— the old and the new constructions interacting to unfold a new climatic performance. The new stairwell and its skylight perform as a buoyant solar chimney, ventilating the house during warm summer months. This vertical ventilation gets cool air from the basement and the garden —the house’s heat sinks— to cool down the upper floors of the house during the summer.

Location: Colonia Unión Eléctrica Madrileña, Madrid

Date: 2015-2020

Client: Private

Area: 270 m²

Project architects: TAAs (Javier García-Germán + Alia García-Germán)

Project team: Alia García-Germán, Julio Gotor, Miriam Alonso

Site supervision: Javier García-Germán

Consultants: GARVAL ingenieros

Quantity Surveyor: Miguel Ángel Martín Melgar

Contractor: FMS construcciones

Budget: 550.000 €

Photography: Miguel de Guzmán y Rocío Romero