For a family that is always on the go, the concept of home can take on a transient quality. That’s the case for journalists and video producers Kirsten Dirksen and Nicolás Boullosa who have explored countless places around the globe while producing content on sustainability for their YouTube channel, Faircompanies. It’s dream existence for many, but one with few constants to rely on.

“We don’t have a permanent sense of home,” admits Kirsten.

“In our case, home is more about a sense of family. You feel connected to some places for one reason or another,” agrees Nico.

These days, the couple and their three children, Inés (16), Ximena (14), and Nicky (11), are based between California, where Kirsten grew up, and Nico’s home region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain.

Years ago, on a hike, they stumbled upon the town of Castellet with its 10th-century castle overlooking the Foix reservoir in the rural Penedès region, and fell instantly in love. The area, just south of Barcelona, is known for its sparkling wine production and spectacular setting between the mountains and the Mediterranean.

“We liked the idea of a little town with a castle on top, and the fact that my family was nearby,” says Nico.

In 2018, they purchased a property on a street corner in Castellet overlooking the reservoir, and they hired Barcelona-based Aixopluc Architects to manage the renovation.

“It was an anonymous, messy, uninteresting old house,” says Aixopluc’s founder and director, David Tapias. “But, like people, uninteresting houses often turn out to be the most interesting in the end.”

One immediate challenge was that the “house” consisted of at least two homes, possibly three. With few doors or windows, it had a dark, fragmented, labyrinthine quality.

“The first construction probably dates back more than 200 years, although there are no documents to support this,” Tapias says. “The materials and styles were eclectic, but not in a deliberate way—it was simply the result of the house having been built gradually by different people over the generations.”

This eclecticism is maintained in the final renovation, which consists of three quite different levels: the stone basement, with its crumbling, plastered walls that have been kept largely intact; the main floor, with its inner walls made of brick, which houses the kitchen and bathroom; and the timber-based top floor, which is the most altered from its original state. The aim here was to capitalize on the light and the views—a task that required a significant amount of work.

“A lot of the space was barely habitable, gloomy, with very low ceilings,” explains Tapias.

The firm removed one “gloomy” space completely to create a room for double-height ceilings and a giant fireplace on the floor below. Meanwhile, they lifted out the roof and replaced it with a timber structure and exposed wood particle insulation to create higher ceilings and let in light.

These days, Tapias likes to call it the House Among Portals, in reference to the system of entryways he built throughout the house. Three vertical pillars run through the structure, from top to bottom, and a “portal” on each floor provides all the services, like water and electric outlets. The nine portals, each consisting of two structural walls that create a threshold, also double as openings between the spaces.

Crucially, the interior of the house has no physical doors, and no designated “rooms” other than the kitchen and bathroom. “All the spaces are multipurpose,” explains Tapias. “There are no defined living rooms or bedrooms.” Instead, each family member received a batch of modular pine-wood furniture elements to distribute around the house as they wished.

“Each floor has six tabletops that can be modified as beds, tables, or desks. So, what is currently a bedroom might become a workspace in the future, or vice versa,” Tapias says. Instead of doors between the rooms, movable esparto grass shades provide privacy as required.

“We designed the house so it can change with us,” says Kirsten. “In the future, the basement floor, where we sleep now, could become a self-contained apartment.”

“We tend to see houses as something fixed without the ability to adapt,” says Nico. “But life evolves, and impermanence affects us all. We hope that 50 years from, the house will be as comfortable as it is today.”

The removal of a number of walls and floors encourages the natural flow of air throughout the house—which previously suffered from a damp problem—and the home has no central heating or air conditioning. For Nico, the flow of the house makes it inviting, and the varied spaces cater to the different needs of the family members.

Kirsten says her favorite feature is the view. “I love to cook and look out the window, or sit on the top floor and see the day change—from the early morning when the fog hits the mountaintops, to the afternoon when the birds fly by right outside,” she explains.

Nico prefers the basement floor, with its earth walls that were plastered decades, or maybe centuries, ago. “I like that Aixopluc didn’t overdo things with clean, modern surfaces,” he says, emphasizing that the modern-day house is a homage to what rural houses in Catalonia looked like three or four generations ago. “We are city people—but that doesn’t mean we should come and impose our vision.”

“Aixopluc is a Catalan word that means ‘shelter’ and, while our house may look big from the outside, it’s no castle,” concludes Nico. “Instead, it’s a small house, next to a castle, built to protect whoever is inside.”

Budget Breakdown: A Barcelona Bachelor Pad Gets Radically Reimagined for €10K

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Aixopluc / @aixopluc.architectures

Builder: Vilella Constructor & Timberlab

Structural Engineer: Aixopluc

Interior Design: Aixopluc

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