Corrigan architects design their own live-work home and create a practical essay on the future of inhabiting

The project —described by the architects as an “atmospheric essay”— does not begin with a programme or a conventional layout, but with a question: what if climatic and sensory conditions were the starting point of the architectural project? This methodological shift is the radical core of the proposal.

“This live-work home was born as a personal commission, without intermediaries, in which for the first time we simultaneously assumed the roles of architects and clients,” explain Macarena Carrascosa and Adrián López, founders of Corrigan Arquitectos. That dual condition allowed them to question decisions that are usually taken for granted: the label of housing, the organisation into rooms and the hierarchy of uses. What began as their own live-work space evolved into “a domestic laboratory, a place to investigate ways of inhabiting through direct experience.”

Instead of rooms, situations

The project deliberately avoids defining itself as a home, studio or accommodation. “Avoiding those labels allows us not to condition how the space is used,” they note. The plan is open, without enclosed rooms; space is organised by intensities, gradients and environmental conditions. “Rather than defining uses, we work with environmental conditions that can be adjusted and transformed, allowing the space to adapt to different ways of being.”

In practice, this means that the same place can be a workspace, a place for rest or for gathering, depending on light, time of day or mood. “The space is used in different ways throughout the day, without needing to move elsewhere for each activity.” Here there are no rooms, only situations.

The form of space is not defined in advance

“We define the project as an atmospheric essay because we understand architecture as a process in which light, temperature, air, sound or degrees of intimacy become the very material of the project.” The final form is not drawn first and then conditioned, but emerges from the combination of environmental variables. “We understand these variables as measurable parameters that can be adjusted depending on the situation,” they explain, referring to temperature, light or privacy. And they add: “The form of space is not defined in advance, but appears as a consequence of how these variables combine and evolve through use.” This statement condenses a clear position in relation to contemporary housing, still largely organised around rigid programmes. In this project, division is not the origin but the result.

Volumes that organise without enclosing

The plan is continuous, organised through a sequence of built volumes. “Concentrating what is fixed within them allows the rest to remain open and adaptable.” These constructed bodies contain installations, storage, vegetation and everyday uses. They act as dense supports within flexible space, rather than traditional partitions.

The kitchen occupies a central position. “More than a purely functional place, it operates as a point of encounter and relationship.” Its prominence reflects an observation about contemporary ways of living: the space where domestic life, work and social interaction overlap is precisely the kitchen.

An oval as microclimate

One of the volumes curves into a translucent oval that accommodates the most intimate area. Designed differently from a conventional bathroom, the architects describe it as “a humid chamber within the continuous space, almost like a small domestic sauna.” Its polycarbonate envelope is conceived as a filter. It retains temperature and humidity, diffuses light and softens boundaries. “More than a closed bathroom, it works as a microclimate within the home.”

This idea raises a question for the future of residential space: could housing incorporate specific micro-environments instead of uniformly conditioned generic spaces?

Filters instead of walls

Metal meshes, polycarbonate and textile curtains. “They are lightweight, permeable materials that filter light, air and sight without completely blocking them.” Privacy is constructed through degrees, no longer dependent on total isolation. “By filtering rather than isolating, these elements allow light, air or even the presence of others to remain perceptible, though softened.” This logic challenges the modern tradition of housing as a sum of closed boxes. Here, boundaries become gradients.

Vegetation is integrated as an active environmental system. “It helps regulate humidity, improve air quality and generate interior microclimates.” It becomes part of the infrastructure.

Visible technology, conscious comfort

The project incorporates automated irrigation, textile climate systems, indirect lighting and façade transparency control. None of these elements are concealed. “We wanted the functioning of the space to be understandable. Technology is not there to disappear, but to make evident that comfort and intimacy are constructed.” This decision is also cultural. Instead of hiding installations, the project integrates them into the spatial language. Comfort becomes an active system.

Building to understand

If this project is an essay on inhabiting, its construction was an essay on practice. “We built it ourselves as a form of learning,” they explain. Macarena and Adrián took on demolition, masonry, plumbing and electrical work. The project documentation records this process through a detailed construction sequence and direct involvement in execution. “Building forces you to simplify, adapt and understand materials through their real behaviour.”

At a time when the distance between design and construction has widened across many practices, this direct involvement restores architecture’s material and temporal dimension.

Where does this project point?

“The contemporary city demands more adaptable spaces,” the architects state. As housing, work and social life overlap, rigid compartmentalisation becomes insufficient. This project proposes other strategies: adjustable systems, microclimates, gradients, filters, visible technology and vegetation as infrastructure.

In their final reflection, Macarena and Adrián express the desire to continue researching “how environmental conditions directly influence both physical and mental health.” Light regulates biological rhythms. Air quality affects bodily wellbeing. Certain environments reduce stress and foster concentration. Architecture, therefore, is not only spatial organisation: it is a tool capable of influencing physical and emotional balance.

This live-work home is a built experiment. Within 70 m², a question is tested: can the home of the future stop being organised by functions and start being organised by conditions? If the answer is yes, projects like this offer a glimpse ahead. We are convinced these young architects are writing the future.

Proyecto: Corrigan Estudio.

Ubicación: Pinto (Madrid).
Superficie construida: 70 m².
Terminado: 2025.
Arquitectura: Corrigan Arquitectos. Macarena Carrascosa + Adrián López.
Fotografía: Imagen Subliminal: Rocío R. Rivas + Miguel de Guzmán.
Fuente: Corrigan Arquitectos.

Corrigan Arquitectos

Corrigan Arquitectos is the practice founded by architects Macarena Carrascosa Sepúlveda and Adrián López Collado, based in Madrid. Their work occupies a hybrid territory between residential architecture, spatial research and direct construction, understanding each project as a system capable of articulating matter, climate and experience.

Far from conceiving architecture as a closed formal or typological response, the studio works from the conditions that make inhabitation possible: light, temperature, humidity, ventilation and degrees of intimacy. In their approach, comfort is not an abstract standard but an adjustable variable, constructed through material, technical and spatial decisions.

Their methodology combines design rigour with direct involvement in execution. In the case of Corrigan Estudio, they assumed not only the design but also the construction, understanding the building process as an essential part of research. This way of working allows them to integrate thought and matter, drawing and body, detail and real time.

Rather than producing closed architectural objects, Corrigan Arquitectos develops open, adaptable systems in which limits are not fixed lines but gradients. Their work poses an underlying question about the present of urban housing: how to construct spaces capable of adjusting to changing forms of life, work and coexistence, without resorting to rigid compartmentalisation or predefined categories.

Project by Corrigan Arquitectos