One of the strongest arguments for a self-build — the idea behind our #hacermemipropiacasa series, roughly “building my own house” — is that you design the house around the way you actually live, instead of adapting your life to a plan somebody else drew.
That matters most to people whose work comes home with them, or never really leaves. A house that also has to hold a studio, a consulting room or a proper office needs specific things from the start: daylight, ventilation, acoustic separation from the rest of the family, its own way in, the right equipment. Spending eight hours a day in a badly lit corner of the living room is a design problem, not a lack of discipline.
The standard housing market answers with the same flat over and over: standardised, single-use, drawn for an average family that may well not be yours. A self-build in Spain — autopromoción: you buy the plot, appoint the architect directly and act as your own developer — adds something to the advantages we set out in this post. You get the chance to build the best workspace you are ever likely to have.
The textbook example is Le Corbusier’s Maison Ozenfant in Paris, designed for one of the artists he worked with. The image at the top shows part of the painting studio built into the house. The tall windows on the façade and the rooflights over the studio bring in a great deal of light without breaking the composition of the space. The light is planned, not borrowed.
In other projects the work becomes inseparable from the house. Casa Sendin, by Tonet Sunyer, doubles as an architecture practice, and privacy survives the arrangement: the plan splits into two clearly separate wings, so studio and home share an address without getting in each other’s way.
Two more recent ones we keep going back to: the house for a carpenter by RCR, and the house for a photographer by Carlos Ferrater. Both take everything they can from a tight plot and tune the design so that a mixed use — home and work under one roof — holds up day to day rather than only on the drawings.
Two honest caveats before anyone starts looking at plots. A self-build takes longer than buying something finished, and planning permission (licencia de obras) is rarely quick in a Costa del Sol town hall. It also asks a good deal more of you than signing for a completed flat. If the workspace is the whole reason you are moving, though, it is usually the only route that actually gets you one.
A few more houses that are also workplaces, below. There are plenty we have left out — roughly as many as there are professions. Suggestions welcome.
