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Caption: A Girona house steeped in history
Old meets new in the city’s medieval quarter
Caption: An unassuming stone building in Catalonia’s Girona weaves a narrative of the medieval town’s past.
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Caption: Architect Anna Noguera redesigned the 16th-century house after buying the property in 2000 – although it wasn’t until ten years later that renovation work would be complete. It was during this decade-long refurbishment that fragments of the structure’s past life were unearthed.
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Caption: Inscribed lintels revealed the 5, 400 sq ft building’s original creator as a 16th-century prior, while a cannon ball and bomb shard, thought to be from the Napoleonic Wars, were also dug up. The renovation works were also held up after builders discovered remnants of a first-century Roman villa.
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Caption: Noguera has retained vestiges of the property’s past in its architecture too. The building’s irregular stonework facade has been exposed, and an original 15,850-gallon courtyard cistern has been restored.
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Caption: Inside tells a different story, with Noguera introducing a contemporary steel, concrete and oak material palette to the space.
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Caption: Partitions were brought down and the stairway was repositioned
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Caption: The architect also added a swimming pool to the courtyard garden, fed by the restored cistern.
Caption: ‘I wanted to reinterpret the old through dialogue with the new,’
Noguera told the New York Times.
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Caption: The house also has a traditional ‘badiu’ – Catalan for a ‘rooftop porch’.
Caption: Words, Tomo Taka
Photography, Enric Duch courtesy of Alemanys 5
See the full story here http://thespaces.com/2016/02/05/rental-of-the-week-a-girona-house-steeped-in-history/
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