The carpentry shop, a house with memory

Before it was a home, it was a workshop—yes, a carpentry shop. For decades, planks were worked within the walls now inhabited by a family. It smelled of wood and the sound of their own tools echoed. Today, that past is not only remembered, it's breathed in. Architect Clara Crous, who describes hers as a practice of "conscious, local architecture and interior design," has transformed the old carpentry shop in a village in the Alt Empordà into a home that looks to the present without abandoning its original essence. Her intervention doesn't erase the traces of what was there, but rather makes it visible and transforms it into a vital structure of the project.

On the ground floor, the visual power of the Catalan vaults lends strength and identity to the space. As elements that were there before the renovation, they sustain the memory of the workshop and now articulate the layout of the home. Beneath these vaults, life is once again concentrated: the kitchen and living room share a single, open, continuous space, where the same materials as always blend with the natural light sources and the new elements that have been introduced. The decision to place the kitchen at this level is not only functional; it is a way of inhabiting memory, of returning daily and collective activity to the place where there had always been movement.

In contrast, the staircase that rises to the two upper floors leads to the most intimate part of the house, now completely freed up for bedrooms and private spaces. In fact, the project seeks coherence and comfort for everyday life, without artifice. As Clara Crous points out, the intervention does not aim to impose any new language, but rather to allow the walls to breathe again. For this reason, the walls have been stripped of their cement and plaster coverings, and the lime mortar and stucco have been restored, allowing the original stone and adobe to breathe. This seemingly technical gesture is also poetic: returning the materials to their natural state, allowing them to do their work with humility.

The light, filtered through the new openings and a restored front courtyard, accentuates the texture of the walls and the warm tones of the stucco. The courtyard, once a relic, has become an important transitional space, a living space, a filter between the street and domestic intimacy. Here the house literally breathes, connecting interior and exterior, past and present.

The sensitivity of the trades is preserved in the hand-made adobe pavements and handmade tiles. Each surface retains a footprint, a minimal irregularity that speaks to the passage of time. This attention to detail, characteristic of Clara Crous's way of working, makes La Fusteria much more than a renovation: it is a reconciliation with its own history. This house shows how tradition can be contemporary and how memory can be structure, not decoration.

In this case, renovation hasn't been an exercise in replacing, but rather in understanding. The layers of the place have been explored and a response has been made with respect and restraint, updating its comfort and energy efficiency without diluting its identity. The character of that space remains in La Fusteria, giving the new home a distinct uniqueness.

Thus, where saws once sounded and the scent of wood and varnish wafted through, today calm, naturalness, and well-chosen light reign. But, in any case, beneath this serenity still beats the spirit of a trade. The vaults, walls, and reclaimed materials make this house a small manifesto on the value of built memory. In the Alt Empordà, an old carpentry shop has reopened its doors, now to live.