Vallribera Noray Arquitectes designs a house in Sabadell with natural materials and bioclimatic strategies

There is a unit of measurement that still lives on in the layout of certain Catalan cities: the palm. Twenty of them — just under four metres — have historically defined the width of terraced houses, the rhythm with which a street divides into thresholds, façades, and domestic lives. On a plot in Sabadell inherited with that dimension and a ruined building on top, a couple commissioned Vallribera Noray Arquitectes to build their home. The brief was also a programme: to inhabit with precision, within one’s own means, with no room for waste.

The project began before the first stone was laid. The deconstruction of the existing dwelling was approached as a recovery operation: materials were separated and sorted for reintegration into other construction cycles, reducing waste generation from the very first act. That initial gesture establishes the ethic that guides the entire work — resource, whether material, energetic, or economic, as something to be stewarded, not a variable to be optimised at the end.

The resulting house occupies 115 m² across two floors. On the ground floor, the domestic space is condensed into a single continuous room — kitchen, living area, and dining room — that opens onto the rear courtyard. The space that in other houses of this type would belong to a car becomes instead an entrance hall with bicycle parking, a laundry area, and storage: a programmatic decision as small as it is revealing of its inhabitants’ priorities. At the centre of the house, a bathroom and a fully open staircase organise the visual and luminous connection between the two floors. On the upper floor: a bedroom, a study, and a bathroom oriented towards the stairwell. The necessary, and nothing more.

The structure as system and finish

The structure is at once system and finish. The upper floor is conceived as a cross-laminated timber (CLT) box resting on the existing party walls; the ground-floor roofs are resolved with timber beams and boarding spanning between that box and the lower façades. The decision to forgo suspended ceilings and added cladding leaves the constructive logic visible: timber structures, encloses, and gives character to the interior. On the ground floor, ceramic tiles from El Bruc on the floor and brick from the Segrià in the walls contribute thermal mass and coolness, forming a palette of materials that actively regulates the temperature and humidity of the house. The insulation is wood fibre; the exterior façades, cork panels. Every material is argued, not decorative.

View of the ground floor from the entrance.

Bioclimatic strategies

The house operates without mechanical climate control systems. This decision, which might be read as a renunciation, is in fact the consequence of rigorous work on the building envelope and bioclimatic performance. In summer, cross-ventilation is reinforced by the chimney effect of the roof windows, which allow accumulated heat to be expelled during the night. Alicantine shutters and fans sustain daytime comfort. In the courtyard, a pergola and vegetation cast shade and mitigate the urban heat island effect. In winter, orientation and insulation retain every solar gain. The result, backed by an energy rating of A, speaks for itself: 21.80 kWh/m²·year of non-renewable primary energy and a cooling demand of just 0.10 kWh/m²·year.

A respected and renewed history

The street façade is restored to recover the original appearance of the house. The building is inserted into the urban fabric with the continuity of a respected and renewed history. That exterior discretion stands in contrast to the density of decisions that sustain it: a project in which every choice — material, orientation, and programme — responds to a single idea of habitability understood as sufficiency.

Twenty palms: the measure is not a constraint; it is the exact scale in which this couple chose to live.

Project: 130AUS.
Type: Obra nueva de vivienda entre medianeras.
Location: Sabadell, Barcelona.
Area: 115 m².
Completed: 2024.
Author: Vallribera Noray Arquitectes.
Architects: Aleix Gil Noray, Alba Robles Ezquerro, Llorenç Vallribera Farriol.
Collaborators: Josep Maria Fosalba (Oftècnics), energy consultant and quantity surveyor; Míriam Molina (MVA), structural consultant; Pol Miret (Recursos Urbans), reuse consultant.
Photography: Marta Vidal.
Non-renewable primary energy: 21,80 kWh/m²·año
Total CO₂ emissions: 4,10 kgCO₂/m²·año.
Heating demand: 7,40 kWh/m²·año.
Cooling demand: 0,10 kWh/m²·año.
Energy rating: A.
Source: Vallribera Noray Arquitectes.