Barcelona Architect, Enric Miralles

In 1996 he was commissioned to Barcelona architect Enric Miralles design a wooden house in a garden near Copenhagen. The project was developed with his wife, architect Benedetta Tagliabue, and the result was a house that came to reflect the life of a family.
Although cancer death prevented the young architect perform home last September, a construction of the house was installed in Diagonal Mar Park Barcelona, between a pergola full of birds, as the projected Miralles.

Enric Miralles

Building time

Denmark still survives in the ancient tradition of building tiny houses as "cabins" in the orchards situated on the outskirts of cities. These groups are called casitas Kolonihaven and its only function is to protect their owners from the cold and rain when they spend time in nature. The new Kolonihaven near Copenhagen groups differ greatly among cherry casitas. Are the works of fourteen prestigious architects were invited to build the various shelters with the only condition not exceed 6 m2.

 
The couple Miralles and Tagliabue generated their project starting from his interest in collecting over time. From that starting point, explained the architects, "the house becomes a calendar". It is a place to feel spend time looking at nature while children play and parents talk around a table. In addition to the drawings and models, the pair of architects illustrated their explanations by a German almanac showing flowers of different months of the year, with their flowering periods: chicory in the mornings of February, water lilies in June, marigolds during September days and carnations open throughout December.

Over time is also recorded to draw the floor of the house. Enric and Benedetta gave their small daughter a miniature chair and the girl began to play with her moving and making use of it to take its first steps. As if it were to draw these movements on the ground, parents generated the plan of the house. 

Since its limits born a wooden structure that forms the volumes that involve, exactly as does a dress, both on the movement of the girl with her chair and adults at the table. At this point, the architects extracted from the book of Le Corbusier, The Modulor 2 the cartoon where a girl asks an adult play with her, inviting him to enter through a small door to the world of its size, "P'pa, joues viens chez moi! ... "Hence the house vary in height. It has a very low ceiling in the children's room, which rises in the living room of adults. This change of scale entails two entrances to the house, one being a door thumbnails for the girl. Therefore, the house, seen through its section, insists capture time; the house grows with the inhabitant, from childhood to becoming an adult.

The focus of this type of tiny shelters is the passing of life. Its function is precisely that, and not much else. So if it is true the saying that an architect is measured by projecting a housing; that same architect you may be measured as a person by projecting a small house for a Kolonihaven. This is the kind of project that, in fact, the architect is entrusted describe how watching life.

Perhaps for this reason, Enric Miralles included his daughter in the development of the cottage in Kolonihaven. He recognized it as a taxpayer and wrote his name on the long list of collaborators project members. It was a mix of private and professional life, something that Enric always did.

Captions.
A-Enric Miralles (1955-2000) and Benedetta Tagliabue (n. 1963), founding architects EMBT. (Photographer: Giovanni Zanzi)
-A Little girl taking her first steps with the help of a miniature chair.
-The House was like a dress that wraps the movements of parents and those of a child.
-built For the exhibition "Cases Impropies" (MACBA, 2001), the house can now be enjoyed in Diagonal Mar Park (Photographer: Alex Gaultier)