Three Courtyard House is a minimal home located in Valencia, Spain, designed by García Floquet Arquitectos. The desire to generate unsuspected domestic spaces and to create new ways of life in dense urban fabrics are the main motivations of this project. A sequence of courtyards permeates the architecture and becomes its organizational structure. A first courtyard, that acts as a foyer in-between the public space and the domestic sphere, provides privacy, silence and wellness. On the ground floor multiple and flexible spaces co-exist.

Without walls, without partitions, working and living spaces are defined by the singular presence of different courtyards. A relationship of immediacy is established with exterior spaces.They introduce light, air, sun and allow contact with vegetation and natural soils. Vertical mobile facades and horizontal protection surfaces collaborate in the appropriation of these exterior spaces according to the needs of the inhabitants and the environmental conditions. A central interior space reconciles daily life taking place on the lower floor and rest activity on the upper floor.

The architecture maintains an intended small scale that unfolds in the depth of the plot. At the interior limit an annex pavilion of work and isolation becomes an observatory of the domestic activity. The volumetric fragmentation of solid elements recovers the imaginary of vernacular living and production spaces. Moreover, it is emphasized with sloping stony roofs that pour the water into the different courtyards. The project is defined by a unique materiality of white exposed concrete, which to the interior and exterior of the house is both structure and tactile texture.

Photography by Mariela Apollonio