Arimon House / García-Durán & Equipo

Architects: García-Durán & Equipo
Location: Sabadell, Spain
Author Architect: Marc García-Durán Huet
Design Team: Simone Branchini, Gabriela Castellanos , Roger Mermi
Area: 700.0 m2
Project Year: 2014
Photography: Adrià Goula

Structural Calculation: Oriol Palou
Construction: H2O constructora / Estanislao Puig
Roof Restoration : Cristina Martí
Furniture: Estanislau Puig
Metalwork: Juan Canadell Lleonart
Text: Placid García-Planas, correspondent for La Vanguardia

Text description provided by the architects. Interior renovation of the Arimon house in Sabadell, for Plàcid Garcia-Planas. Special emphasis was placed on the restoration of the different layers of history and the integration of contemporary comfort.

Our client wrote:

Architecture is essentially the search for light. And this is what the architect Marc García-Durán did in the renovation of our old family home.

The house was originally built by the architect, urban planner and mathematician Josep Oriol i Bernadet in 1858. It was completely renovated in a modernist style by Josep Renom i Costa in 1911 and partially renovated by Santiago Casulleras i Forteza in 1945. In 2008 Marta Domenel and Núria Bartomeu designed the handrail of the main staircase.

In an amazing dialogue with the architects who preceded him, Marc García-Durán has cut walls with his drawing pen and stripped staircase structures. Not to create new spaces or rediscover old spaces. But rather to create while rediscovering. To dilute the hands of time. To search, definitively, for the light.

The architect has not only dialogued with time. He has also talked with the space, with the factory that is next to the house, and with the family’s textile tradition, while transforming wool into glass and old boxes of thread into closets.

The exterior of the house is officially classified as cultural patrimony. I have no doubt that after Marc García-Durán’s intervention the interior will be also awarded one day.