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Three Houses of Brick Connected by Outdoor Rooms

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There is something very 1930s about brick buildings.

It’s easy to overlook innovation in a material that is so humble and unassuming.

The garden has a sincere depression-era feel – even in the flowers, the low wood-framed window and the brick facade on the pool.

But this home comprising three brick buildings connected by two outdoor rooms from Spanish architects H Arquitectes is quietly revolutionary.

The middle building contains the wonderful surprise of a soaring high ceiling.

The heart of the home, this central room is a farm kitchen complete with a wall-to-wall countertop and huge oak table for nine.

The central kitchen building is single story, while the two side buildings house bedrooms upstairs.

The kitchen connects on one side with an al fresco dining “room” and a quiet reading nook.

This outdoor room can be extended by opening the glass french doors between the two buildings, making it a charming entertaining space for long summer evenings.

The stifling heat of Spain’s midday summer is kept out by outdoor awning shades and the breezy passageways between the three buildings

Materials are simple: concrete floors, concrete block, brick and timber.

Ceilings in the humble whitewashed bedrooms and outdoor rooms alike are timber-formed concrete.

A reading nook off the kitchen encourages the dreamy ease of burying yourself in a book.

To the other side of the kitchen, the living room is as much outdoors as it is in, a modern convention defied by its traditional brick facade setting.

This is a house with a very unique quality of rustic, casual “modernity” but it is never archly retro.