The house that grew looking at the sea, facing the Rambla and the Paseo Marítimo of Badalona, by Alventosa Morell

Fifteen kilometers from the center of Barcelona, Badalona has built its identity upon a rich history. With more than 200,000 inhabitants, the city preserves the trace of Baetulo, the first-century BC Roman colony that gave rise to Dalt de la Vila, its old town, and also the memory of an intense industrial past —textile, chemical, metallurgical— that, between the fifties and sixties, drew waves of migration from the south of Spain and raised entire neighborhoods with a communal strength that still defines its character. After the industrial decline of the seventies, Badalona recovered its relationship with the sea in the following decade. Old warehouses were torn down, the beaches were restored, and the Paseo Marítimo stopped being a frontier to become the vital axis of the city. La Rambla, the great promenade full of terraces that runs parallel to the Paseo Marítimo, functions as a meeting place and the city’s true shared living room, and explains —together with the sea and its beaches— much of its everyday life. 

The façade of the house, the subject of this project, opens onto the Rambla, with the immensity of the sea in view. It is that double bond —with the street and the sea horizon, so near— the starting point of this house, built for a family of three, on a narrow plot between party walls, by Alventosa Morell Arquitectes and Pàmies Arquitectura.

The structure that orders the whole house

The house occupies the full width of the plot and is developed over four levels and an accessible terrace. The entire interior organization stems from a structural decision: on the ground floor, a series of concrete porticoes frees the space and supports the upper levels, resolved from this point on with load-bearing brick walls. That shift from a point structure to one of continuous load is not merely a constructive device, it is the argument that orders the whole house. The brick walls, painted white, filter the light, frame the views, and develop the rhythm of a sequence of spaces that follow one another in height, amplifying the natural light as it reflects from one room to the next.

Ground floor: a threshold that crosses the block

The ground floor functions as a passage that connects the two streets bordering the plot. One access serves the garage, while the large wooden gate faces the Rambla and opens the house directly onto the seafront. The double height of this vestibule receives zenithal light from the floor above and illuminates the spiral staircase along the vertical path of this first stretch.

Kitchen and dining room: the shared heart of the house

Going up to the first floor means entering the shared heart of the house. Here the kitchen —resolved in light wood and stainless steel— does not hide in a corner: it occupies the entire length of the party wall, becoming the great protagonist of the house, together with the dining room into which it flows, which widens the space just before opening completely onto the patio through a system of folding doors, erasing the boundary between interior and exterior.

A void lit from the roof

On the second floor a shift occurs. Here the living room, a guest bedroom, and a full bathroom coexist, distributed on either side of the entrance hall, turned into a central void through which the two flights of stairs run. Raised in double height and bathed in the light that enters directly from the roof skylights, it behaves like a true luminous chimney for the rest of the house. At the ends, the rooms open to the exterior with large windows that return, once again, the view over the palm trees and the sea.

The bedrooms and the terrace look out to the sea

At the very top, the third floor gathers the main bedrooms, joined by a walkway that looks out over the double-height void. The ceiling rises here somewhat more than in the rest of the house, and that difference is enough for the rooms to gain in spaciousness and light. The terrace, just above, closes the vertical path of the building with an outdoor shower and open views over the sea: the natural culmination of a house that has been gaining height, floor by floor, without ever ceasing to look toward the horizon.

An architecture that integrates structure, climate, and everyday life

The thermal behavior of the house is part of the structural concept. The bioclimatic strategy, developed from thermal comfort studies by Societat Orgànica, increases the thermal inertia of the building through the ceramic of its walls and organizes a constant air circulation that reduces the need for cooling in summer; hot air rises through the double-height spaces and the stairs up to the top floor, where it is finally expelled through the roof skylights. In winter, that same thermal inertia, combined with the large windows, allows the house to take advantage of solar incidence with minimal temperature loss.

This house thus sums up, in domestic terms, Alventosa Morell Arquitectes’ commitment to an architecture that integrates structure, climate, and everyday life. A house between party walls that, despite its narrow limits, finds in light and air its true free space, and that, from its palm-lined street, never ceases to look toward the sea.

Project: Casa PR21.
Program: Single-family house.
Location: Badalona, Cataluña.
Area: 253 m².
Completed: 2026.
Authors: Alventosa Morell Arquitectes + Pàmies Arquitectura.
Team: Néstor Morro (architect), Lluis Bros (construction), Iñaki González (technical architect), Minim (furniture), Societat Orgànica (comfort demand analysis)
Photography: José Hevia.
Source: Alventosa Morell Arquitectes.

Alventosa Morell Arquitectes

In the landscape of contemporary architecture, where technical innovation coexists with environmental urgency, the studio Alventosa Morell Arquitectes stands out. Founded in 2012 by Marc Alventosa Zaidín and Xavier Morell Jané, based in Barcelona and Lleida, it has made sustainability a fundamental principle, the true DNA of its way of conceiving its projects.

Its architectural practice rests on the firm conviction that architecture must respond to climate, landscape, and people with solutions that, from sense and beauty, guarantee comfort, efficiency, and environmental respect. It is not about adding a “green” layer to the building, but about designing projects that are born already integrated into a natural balance.
See full biography.

Project by Alventosa Morell Arquitectes