Two into one.

A house that combines Modern fluidity of space in three dimensions with a sense of particular, individual places.

In designing a house for himself and his family, the Barcelona architect, Tonet Sunyer, was concerned to invest Modern architectural perceptions with traditional aspects of domesticity. His house has a sitting room with a fireplace, a library, a staircase, and bedrooms on the upper floors. Such elements, cut out of a single rectangular volume, have been made to relate to each other visually as well as functionally, woven together to form a coherent whole within simple geometric form. There is an elemental theme expressed in the austere use of materials such as wood, glass and stone, there is water and airy volume.

The house stands on a gently sloping site in San Gervasio above Barcelona. A cranked and truncated triangle in shape, it is bounded by streets on the north and east. Planning laws dictate that new development follows the existing building line of the long north boundary. Where the line breaks to form an angle, he has set a guest pavilion (for two people) parallel to the east boundary and linked to the main house by a covered passageway. Looked at from the north, paved and illuminated as if it were a private street, the two buildings are unified by a single brick facade and read as a single dwelling, with access on each side of the site. On the southern (garden) side, the two dwellings separate out, and the opacity of the back wall dissolves into a finely textured composition of wood panels and louvres, and glass, stepped back at the top of the main house to allow for a roof terrace.

The house, on three storeys, is approached from the west by a glass bridge over a pool. Internally, a bald description of the layout suggests convention: on the ground floor is a kitchen, sitting and dining room; on the first, the main bedroom, with bathroom, dressing and studio/library; and on the second floor, the children's quarters and a roof terrace. But Sunyer has translated the plans into sections that are more complex, with spaces that are expanded or contracted, depending on function.

You enter a hall that rises the height of the building and contains the staircase. This is broken into two flights, the arrangement making a visual, as well as functional, connection between ground and first floors. Other such inter-connections have been established. The living room, looking over garden and the pool, is a double-height volume with a fireplace overlooked by the library on the first floor and bookshelves reached by a glass footbridge. At dusk, the pool outside casts reflections of the setting sun into the room. The space contracts in height and becomes more intimate as one approaches the eastern end of the house where there is a sitting room, kitchen and dining room giving onto the leafy garden. Upstairs, the main bedroom receives the south-east sun and can be opened up to ancillary spaces, or closed down, by sliding wooden panels. Above this, where the children's bedrooms are disposed on either side of a bathroom, glazed panels lead to the roof terrace built of light materials at tree-top level.