Re-House is the result of the refurbishment of an agricultural house in the 80s for its conversion into a dual home for its owners, a couple and their daughter, conducted by AZAB.

AZAB was an architecture office based in Bilbao. They now continue their respective practices under the names Acha Zaballa and BEAR. You can read AZAB's profile here.

Located in the hinterland of Bilbao, the construction must readjust and combine the agricultural work activity of the couple with the telework of their daughter, and at the same time respond to future needs.

AZAB’s first reflection arises from how to look beyond the idealised falsification of the urbanite in the countryside.

The project thus chooses not to get involved in urbanised environments that soften its surroundings, accepting and emphasising the abrupt position of the house, lying on the side of the road, between orchards and pastures.

The project occupies the ground floor, previously intended for agricultural storage, and the first floor through a double housing program.

This strategy seeks in their antagonistic definitions a certain complementarity in use, which, although thought for an autonomous use, can be oriented towards a richer mix that satisfies the varying needs of the two users with a certain typological uncertainty.ategy

In this way, the ground floor unfolds towards the landscape with a transparent envelope and an open plan scheme that centralises the wet spaces in the central spine.

Although this house seeks to enjoy the privileged plot that surrounds it, it does not intend to incorporate the landscape as a denoted urban construct, but rather to provide a distant and controlled look in accordance with someone who belongs to the countryside.

For this, the gesture of the perimeter emphasises the private nature of the construction, generating a kind of trench that protects the user from the environment, generating a controlled and controllable environment, but without giving up projecting the gaze to the horizon.

On the contrary, the upper house is configured from a succession of rooms of similar dimensions and whose relative position and opening of doors and windows qualify in a unique way, creating an open program to be used in various ways.

The relationship with the environment is also raised in an antagonistic way and through conventional gaps that mark the different visuals and that through shutters covered with the same façade skin allow darkening or opening, contaminating the environment of the activity of the house.

In short, for AZAB, it is a project that aims to maximise the possibilities of the built volume by giving it a new image and updated features that allow an adequate and compatible use of two houses.