David Pou van den Bossche’s grandparents and father were born and raised in their 16th century masia (Catalan Villa) on the Costa Brava, but when David came of age, the family had grown too large for the estate.

To make room for David’s generation, they turned to outbuildings like an abandoned hayloft and horse stable. All of these structures were located on the northern side of the property, which lacked good solar orientation and were highly exposed to strong winds.

David’s sister inherited the old home of the family horse (Nino), his brother received an upstairs hallway/porch area and David was given the hayloft. Since David and his partner Estel Ortega are architects they volunteered to make these spaces liveable.

Nearly windowless and covered in cement, back in 2005, the hayloft was an inhospitable storage shed. The architect couple (partners in life and in work with their firm Cubus Taller d’Arquitectura) wanted to preserve as much as possible so they stripped the structure down to its original stone and left this outer “box” nearly intact (except for one landscape window).

The concept was to think in cubic meters and to create a box within a box. The outside is the original stone box and inside the architects created a two-story red and white box to house all of the “wet” elements: the kitchen and bathroom. This allows for separation between the bedroom and office (on the top floor) and the guest bedroom/art studio and kitchen/living room on the lower floor.

The architects wanted to leave the stone walls untouched so they didn’t mount anything to the walls (the only closed room in the home is the bathroom). The result: the small space feels larger because of unobstructed views from any corner of the house.

There are only 60 square meters (divided onto two floors), but the couple thinks the space is large enough even for the next generation (they have plans to divide the tiny guest bedroom/art studio into micro-tiny bedrooms).