Twobo Arquitectura organises Casa Tres Patis around distinct patios

A covered walkway connects the series of pavilions and patios that make up this house near Barcelona, designed by local studio Twobo Arquitectura.

Named Casa Tres Patis or House of Three Patios, the 300-square-metre family home is located in Albons, close to the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Empúries.

The living spaces are split into three steel and concrete-framed pavilions, organised around three distinct patios that Twobo Architectura call a "foundational element" of Mediterranean dwellings.

"We wanted to recover the patio as a foundational element of Mediterranean dwelling – already present in Greek and Roman architecture – and make it the true gravitational centre of the project," studio founder Pablo Twose told Dezeen.

"The house is conceived from the patio: the aim was to create an autonomous domestic landscape, with its own internal logic, almost like a microcosm, where open space is as habitable and essential as the built," he added.

The three pavilions divide the home into living spaces, bedrooms and guest areas, with each of the three external patios referencing traditional Mediterranean typologies.

A large kitchen and dining area overlooks the entrance patio, which is intended to evoke the social atmosphere of town squares, planted with a central tree surrounded by a pétanque court.

Alongside it is a patio with a shallow pool that nods to an impluvium – shallow rainwater pools found in Roman homes that were used for bathing and passive cooling.

The third patio at the southern end of the site features an aromatic herb garden based on those found in monastic cloisters, strategically positioned alongside an outdoor kitchen and dining area.

Casa Tres Patis's internal spaces are purposefully arranged to necessitate moving through these patios, with a sheltered concrete walkway connecting the northern living volume to the central bedroom pavilion and the southern guest areas, garage and workshop.

"The project understands the house as an open diagram, where the transition from one place to another defines the different programs and the experience of inhabiting," Twose said.

"The layout enables a shared yet autonomous way of living, and reinforces the idea of the patio as a communal core. Life flows porously between these movements, between patios and pavilions," he continued.

The material palette of Casa Tres Patis was guided by what Twose describes as a "dialogue between the industrial and the handcrafted", with steel-framed and concrete structures set against screens of hollow brickwork and areas of hand-applied lime plaster.

This is carried through to the interiors, where tilework and dark wood ceilings, wall panels and built-in storage have been used to soften exposed, white-painted steelwork and glossy concrete floors.

Twobo Arquitectura was established in Barcelona in 2007 by Pablo and Alberto Twose alongside María Pancorbo.

Other homes organised around patios include the black-timber Senior Shelter in the Netherlands by i29 and a modernist-style home in France by Alors Studio.

The photography is by Jose Hevia.

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