The farmhouse has an almost square floor plan, 17.30m deep and 15.30m wide, with a gabled roof and a laterally attached tile roof that houses the oven. Its main façade is oriented to the southwest.
The farmhouse responds to a typical typological variant of Gorbeialdea, a very widespread typology in the area. The exceptional nature of Muneko Goikoa lies in the fact that it is the most complete representative that has been preserved of the farmhouses built with wooden façades back from the 16th century (…)”.
[Etor Tellería Sarriegui, Arantza González San Román. DFB. Intervention criteria and patrimonial valuation Caserío Muneko Goikoa. File 89/2022]
The structure of the farmhouse is made of oak wood, with perimeter masonry walls on the ground floor, later extended to the entire northeast and northwest facades (rear and front side). The first floor fronts, both the main façade and southeast side, are made of tongue and groove wooden planks, with sections of original slit planks interspersed with later replacements.
The current construction has three levels. The ground floor with direct access from the outside in the center of the main façade. The first floor with accesses on the flanks of the main façade by means of two skids. And the top of the drying room that occupies the two central bays in the space below deck.
The ground floor is an open space on an irregular and sloping floor. On the first floor, the two central bays house two barn rooms, one on the main façade, the second below occupying the northern half. In recent times, a bathroom attached to the rear façade has been added. These rooms are flanked laterally by a sequence of three symmetrical spaces. To the northwest, they form the inhabited house, with a modern definition, the result of the reform of the 19th century and subsequent updates. To the southeast, the three subdivisions retain their original definition, structure, bulkhead divisions, access doors…
“Originally it was a single-family farmhouse with a central arcade(…).”
[Etor Tellería Sarriegui, Arantza González San Román. DFB. Intervention criteria and patrimonial valuation Caserío Muneko Goikoa. File 89/2022]
The central open portico was walled up presumably in the 19th century reform, and two skates symmetrical in their location, not exactly in their shape, give access to each of the two side units of the farmhouse.
Previous considerations.
The farmhouse. From the productive use to the domestic space.
A farmhouse is not exactly a home. It’s more of a factory. A productive unit where the spaces associated with work occupy most of the built volume, reserving only a small part for the home.
““(…) It is a house, yes, but in it the residential elements are very secondary, both in the space they occupy and in the hierarchy of values and constructive effort dedicated to them, compared to the functions and strictly productive areas of the house. In houses like Igartubeiti, the family living space, whether day or night, is limited to less than 15% of the surface of the building, while the rest of the farmhouse is a succession of rooms specialized in the stabling of different species of cattle., individualized storage of all the variety of harvest products and various rooms dedicated to the transformation of plant and animal products, or to carrying out craft work. This efficient and orderly multifunctionality, and therefore economically profitable, together with its constructive solidity, must have been the most evident and attractive difference that distanced the first farmhouses from the old medieval cabins (…)”.
“(…) The genius that occurred at the end of the 15th century with the invention of the farmhouse was to incorporate the wine press into the structure of the housing unit, although perhaps it would be more correct to describe it in reverse terms, because given the colossal size that When the new presses reached, it could be said that it was the people and their domestic animals who moved to live inside the machine.”
[Alberto Santana. History of the Igartubeiti farmhouse. Igartubeiti Gipuzkoako baserri bat. DFG]
In Muneko Goikoa, which has been inhabited until two decades ago, 19% of its surface is used for domestic rooms in its most recent stage. Exactly the northeast side bay on the first floor dedicated to the kitchen and two bedrooms. And part of the central bay where the granary room on the main façade was used as a living room, as well as a bathroom added in more recent times.
What happens when the remaining 81% of the surface is no longer productive and we try to domesticate it?
The environment as a value of the original construction.
The qualities of the 1550 farmhouse that we want to preserve are rooted in specific construction systems. On a certain scale conditioned by the functionality and technical possibilities of the construction. Certain spatial organization that defines the vital priorities of its occupants.
But also in a certain atmosphere. Twilight spaces, air permeability. The blackening patina of the wood. Framed visuals. The intense presence of the seasons of the year through the variation of light and temperature.
The concept of the domestic from 1550 to today.
Concepts associated with the domestic such as privacy, intimacy, and of course comfort in contemporary terms, are a modern invention.
“Comfort in the material sense would not continue until the 18th century, as would the improvement of technologies such as water supply and heating, and the improvement of the internal division of the house. But the transition from the feudal public house to the family private house had already begun. The growing feeling of domestic privacy was as much a human invention as any technical device. In fact, it may have been more important, since it affected not only our material environment, but also our consciousness.”
[Witold Rybczynski (1970). The intimate and the private. Home. History of an idea.]]
The definition of the domestic in the 16th century farmhouse is very basic.
Let’s think about the kitchen. With an exempt and minimal furnishing and a fire on the ground. Nothing else. And the same if we pay attention to the bedroom space. Initially non-existent as a specific chamber, in any case shared and with hardly any furniture.
And it is in this essentiality where its authentic attractions lies.
But is it possible to inhabit a house today with that radical essentiality?
What transformation does it mean to bring the pure, essential space, with a wooden structure and closures, closer to a comfortable stay today?
From a contemporary perspective, the definition of home has become something consensually uniform. But, is it the same to live in a farmhouse in a rural village that has barely changed in recent centuries as to live in a house in the city suburbs?
The intervention, conditions and consequences
“A difficulty facing the architect is how to negotiate a past that concerns the detective and the historian and a future that is of interest to the client and the occupants. (…) The architect needed to resolve the contradiction at the heart of the conservation process described by Raphael Samuel in these terms: how far can ‘adaptive re-use’ be carried before it comes something else? Clearly the contradiction applies not only to conservation work, but to all work that claims to have an interest in the past and in the effects of time upon buildings.
Given the barely visible presence of the past, the contradiction is to a large degree insolvable. To this extent, all new occupation is an infraction and is does violence to the past”
[Irénée Scarbert y 6a architects (2013). Intervention. Never Modern.]
Since 1550, the year the farmhouse was built until today, the building has undergone various transformations. Some more visible, others less noticeable. In general, all associated with the functional adaptation of what exists to the needs of the property in each era.
The rehabilitation that is now planned is one more transformation in that sequence of changes throughout almost five centuries.
This overlapping of additions, mutations, repairs, is what defines today’s farmhouse.
“In the building that has survived to this day, two phases of construction can be clearly distinguished: the 1st phase, corresponding to a farmhouse-press-agricultural built at the beginning of the 16th century, and the 2nd phase, after the reform that it undergoes at the beginning of the century. XIX, reusing many of the wooden elements of the previous building, to become a two-family farmhouse”
[Etor Tellería Sarriegui, Arantza González San Román. DFB. Intervention criteria and patrimonial valuation Caserío Muneko Goikoa. File 89/2022]
The purpose of the proposed rehabilitation is, in addition to preserving the farmhouse, to make it habitable as a single-family home. This starting point again entails the need to adapt the existing construction to respond to specific requirements.
How do we make the definition of the current requirement dialogue with what exists?
To what extent does the definition of current demand require transforming the building?
The building will not be exactly the same after the intervention. It is not possible an authentic, scientific regression to the end of the 16th century. Not even recreated since we are not pursuing a museum house, but a home to live in.
Is it still possible to preserve in the inhabited house the differential features of the original farm?
Active House vs. Passive House
“At a time when energy and resource efficiency in general has become the new industry paradigm and construction does not seem justified in continuing to use comfort prediction models that are more demanding than others that already exist (…). This results in demands that are impossible to meet or “over-adequate” environments, with the energy, material and economic expense that this entails.”
[Alfonso Godoy Munoz. Adaptive thermal comfort]
The farmhouse is a building adapted to the climate, with (not technical) mechanisms to respond to the evolution of day to day throughout the year. In the intended home adaptation, we believe that energy should be used sparingly.
Today, based on current regulatory parameters, the aim is to reduce consumption through energy efficiency, which means that the indoor climate is controlled, standardized and generated more and more technologically. Introducing these levels of technology in the existing construction imposes profound changes in the definition of construction systems, therefore in their image and in the character of what is to be preserved.
But this uniformity of normative climate does not correspond to the real needs.
Is there an alternative to the indoor uniform technified climate?
The seasons of the year and the diversity of the site-specific microclimate enrich the dwelling. The idea is to allow a use of the house consistent with the nature of the farmhouse through the definition of various environments, different indoor climates.
The proposal.
The 1550 farmhouse is entirely built of wood. Only the pillar bases and the lower level perimeter walls against the ground are made of stone. An easily legible wooden construction, precise in its details and explicit in its composition. It hides nothing, everything is visible. It’s simple. Structural, tactile and visual properties are all one.
We work so that what we do now, immersed in the postmodern condition of our contemporaneity, is the same. A synthesis intervention with the same explicit mechanism based on the technical-form or kernform concept of the original farmhouse.
The proposal brings together two aspects, consolidation of the existing and adaptation intervention for 21st century home use.
The consolidation of what exists seeks to strengthen and repair the foundation elements, structure, floors, interior divisions, façade and roof.
Maintaining the original construction characteristics of the most unique elements, such as the timber-framed façade and closing boards or carpentry elements and interior divisions of bulkheads. It is considered a priority to perserve its perception both from the external image and from the internal vision. It is about cleaning up, repairing and returning the original benefits through the use of traditional construction techniques. Replacing the essentials. And assuming the imperfections, deformations, the patina.
Regarding the definition of the house, the following strategies are used: the use of a single construction system, light wooden framework, which is at the same time structure, enclosure, division and furniture; and the program organization according to a hierarchy based on adaptive comfort. These two strategies facilitate the preservation of the original in its literal definition, while responding to the habitability requirement.
The insertion of wooden frames built from vertical and horizontal planes in certain openings to house the essential rooms of the house, provides a bracing element to the structure that presents not only deformation, but also a lack of rigidity. These frames occupy entire bays between four pillars, without altering the existing structure or bulkheads. They form the conditioned space.
What remains inside the house outside the frames is the intermediate space, rooms without artificial air conditioning and with the original enclosures. These spaces are actively inhabited, colonized by the expansive activity of summer or occasionally in winter. To which the current regulatory requirements do not apply, because by themselves they cannot provide an answer, but which nonetheless keep the essential definition of the 16th century phase. Unprogrammed spaces that offer freedom of use and complement the programmed spaces that house the basic functions of the home.
On the ground floor, the cowshed is pending the result of the archaeological campaign. Its rugged topography is preserved. Two wide openings are inserted in the SE and NE masonry walls to provide lighting to this space. Two equal openings, with a semicircular arch, clearly contemporary, but in easy dialogue with the existing facades. In the place where the kitchen was predictably once located, a chimney is inserted on the slightly recessed floor. The fire against the ground as it was in the very first version of the building. The fireplace serves to temper the stable in winter.
On the first floor, once the barn, the central façade is captivating not only from the outside, but also from the inside. If the barn is an intermediate space, we can preserve its originality with a consolidation intervention. Rescuing the small window with the double pointed arch, reproducing the missing symmetrical one and providing both inside with sliding shutters made up of boards joined with combs.
The side barn, used as a workshop until very recently, retains the partitions with bulkheads and doors. Its façade barely retains original boards. It is proposed to replace the center of the fixed plank façade with three practicable elements, liftable sliding frames, with a plank closure. In the closed position they simulate the fixed façade. In an open position, they allow the sun to pass through and open up this sequence of spaces re-qualified as a gallery to the view of Itxina. A transition space inside – outside that works as a thermal mattress. The type of projected opening is associated with the productive essence of the space, originally not strictly domestic.
Above the fire, in the central bay, the precarious opening of log slabs is eliminated. And the ladder is inserted into a cylindrical frame.
In the upper floor, the landing of the stairs appears accompanied by the roof light collector. This hole is the third opening that is projected in the continuum of intermediate or unprogrammed space.
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