T.I.A. house in Almería
Almería, ES
ongoing since 2014

* Title: T.I.A. House 1 + 2

* Address: Calle Moreda, Almería, Spain

* Year of construction: 2014 - ongoing

* Thematic focus: rrrchitecture (reduce / reuse / recycle)

* Project text: A friend buys a small, derelict house near the city centre. It costs 15.000 €. When we first spoke about the house, he had already bought five wooden windows from an old carpenter in a small village, while hiking the mountains close by. All he asked for in the beginning was some advice, where to place them in the facades.

One advice after the other, our communication grew to become a design, without feeling like a proper project for a long time. When arriving for the first proper visit on site, the concrete slab of the roof had just been poured. The quality was horrific. The builder operated far from legal standards and went bankrupt shortly after. From there on, the client would execute most of the works himself. He had no experience as a craftsman and, apart from a shovel, a hammer and some fragments of scaffolding, didn’t own any tools. The budget for the extension and refurbishment was 25.000 €. What remained of the building are the perimeter walls of the ground floor with its listed façade.

“T.I.A.!, This Is Africa!”, an expression between resignation and composure, which we had extensively come across on constructions sites in Uganda a few years earlier, became the project title: T.I.A. House – This Is Almería!

While finishing the first building, we put our idea of connecting the house to the next plot through its small patio, into our friend's head. A year later he decided to buy the neighboring plot in order to establish an enclosed “paradise garden” and a small guest house along with it. T.I.A. House 2.

01 Why is the project particularly relevant for PIONIRA?

To us, the project is more about the process of its creation than its final form. It shows how little can be necessary to start off onto a journey to relevant questions of the future of building.
(see the Book “Buero Kofink Schels In Practice, T.I.A. House I+II”, info below)

02 What have you learned from the project? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you solve them?

Given the extremely limited Budget, the non-availability of sophisticated building techniques and the long distance between us and the building site, and hence the limits of control over the whole process, we have been forced to work beyond regular standards, often reacting to “catastrophes”, that happened on site. Reduction of interventions, reuse of building materials, low tech solutions, these aspects, which might have felt like a straightjacket in the beginning, turned out to generate an unexpected freedom in the development of the project. Everything seemed possible as long as it would be feasible.

03 What advice could you provide, based on the project?

Try to start doing things, before you know too much about how they should be done. With this sense of positive naivety, it can be easier to do it in your own, pioneering way. Do things as long as they look easy for you to do.

04 How would you like to build in the future?

Our current goal is to transfer the attitude, which we have built during our first radical projects to other fields and scales. We would like to design and build as we have been aiming to do from the beginning. Honestly, ecologically responsible, valuable for an openminded society and poetically pragmatic.

Book:

Buero Kofink Schels In Practice, T.I.A. House I+II

24*17 cm - 190p + dust jacket, English

ISBN : 978-9-4639-3572-2

editors : Harold Fallon (KU Leuven), Benoît Vandenbulcke (ULiège), Benoît Burquel (ULB)
authors : Mathieu Wellner, Simon Jüttner, Sebastian Kofink, Maud Hagelstein, Tadeja Zupancic, Muck Petzet
with contributions by : Benoît Vandenbulcke, Benoît Burquel and Harold Fallon

published : Mer (imprint of Borgerhoff & Lamberigts)

photographer : Simon Jüttner

layout : Orfée Grandhomme & Ismaël Bennani (Überknackig)

Name: T.I.A. House 1 & 2
Location: Almería, Spain
Text and images by: Buero Kofink Schels
Type: Places
 
Posted: February 2024
Categories: crafts, architect, localism, raw materials, reuse

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