‘Stories of contemporary domesticity or HOMEland’, a series curated by Archt., explores different interpretations of the notion of home through an open dialogue with contemporary architectural approaches to housing.
The twelfth episode follows H3o Architects, a young architecture studio based in Barcelona, as they shape Relámpago House in the small town of Sant Just Desvern, Catalonia, as a symbolic space of transcendence, liberation, and renewal, born out of a folk legend directly linked to the local collective consciousness. Zigzagged geometries and vibrant colors, symbolizing life’s joyful dynamism, mark a festive domestic experience for a historian with a passion for creativity and the arts. With the striking power of lightning, this idiosyncratic home advocates for a suspension of ordinary spatial norms and hierarchies, allowing the self to explore repressed parts of itself and practice inner freedom.
“As if you could choose love, as if love were not the lightning bolt that splits you in two and leaves you stricken in the middle of the courtyard,” writes Julio Cortázar in Hopscotch.
Lightning, just like love, is a totally unexpected phenomenon that happens and changes profoundly the shape of things.
As pure electricity, the uncontrollable nature of lightning turns it into a deeply transformative force that reconfigures matter. From this electrical starting point, Adrià Orriols, Joan Gener, and Miquel Ruiz, the founders of H3o Architects, renovated a modest 55 m² old barn situated within the historic rural estate Can Cardona in the small town of Sant Just Desvern on the outskirts of Barcelona, inspired by the legend of the lightning that struck the traditional Catalan farmhouse many years ago.
Long ago in Sant Just, when the dark skies burned bright,
the village fell silent in thunder and light.
Behind shuttered windows they waited in fear
while fire in the heavens drew suddenly near.
Through Can Cardona’s window it entered in flame,
not falling but moving as if it knew aim;
a bright living sphere in the trembling air,
circling slowly as though searching there.
Beneath the table the family stayed still,
hearts beating together against the will
of time that stretched thin in the flickering glow,
while the room filled with light from below and above.
Then softly it vanished, as quickly as born,
leaving only the hush of a luminous storm.
And some nights they whisper, when rain starts to fall,
the lightning returns through the chimney and all.
As if another lightning had entered the house, petrified just at the moment of the fall, H3o Architects shape Relámpago House, employing bold geometry and a robust color palette.
The concept and form of lightning as an abrupt encounter that reorganizes relationships between space, atmosphere, and meaning reveal architecture as a field of imaginative energies rather than a fixed object.
Relámpago, the Spanish word for lightning, forms a home rooted in local oral history, collective memory, and myth.
The zigzagged interior walls of the gable-roofed property delineate the different domestic areas, marked by vibrant color choices impossible to miss. “Relampago House is a project that speaks of one of our great concerns in spatial exploration: morphology and colour approached through fantasy,” say the architects.
A deep ocean blue speaks for the bathroom, a baby pink for the sleeping chamber, while a mixture of pale yellow, cypress, and pistachio green upholsters the surfaces that make the kitchen happen. White curtains, cupboards, ceilings, and walls counterbalance the outgoing expressiveness of the colorful bricolage, grounding the home in its earthy background.
Tiny stones as doorknobs confirm that this is a thunderstruck residence.
Designed for an artsy and passionate historian, Relámpago House transcends the conventional notion of home through a festive narrative, aiming to introduce a theatrical version of domesticity where everyday life playfully unfolds.
About h3o Architects
H3o Architects is a Barcelona-based architecture firm formed by Adrià Orriols, Joan Gener and Miquel Ruiz. Their practice promotes innovative and speculative designs in the fields of architecture and urbanism facing the challenges of contemporary society. Climate change, social responsibility and the hybridization of human and non-human realities are at the core of each project. In the field of theory, the studio investigates the membrane as the epidermis of architecture and its social, political and ecological implications.
Among its projects are the conversion of the Convent of the Poor Clares into the new library in Arenys de Mar, the 155-unit housing block at Kop-Dakpark (Rotterdam), winner of the Europan 15 Rotterdam Award, the renaturalization of the square in Castell d’Aro, and the new residence for the elderly in Es Migjorn Gran, Menorca, all of them ongoing projects. One of their latest projects has been the ephemeral installation “Nomad Assembly” in the Mercat dels Encants, as the central stage of Model. Festival of architectures of Barcelona 2023.
Facts & Credits
Project title Relámpago House
Typology Stories of Contemporary Domesticity, Residential, Renovation
Episode Twelfth
Location Sant Just Desvern, Catalonia, Spain
Built area 55m²
Status Completed, 2023
Architecture H3o Architects
Art direction Claudia Mauriño
Photography José Hevia
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