Casa Iriarte by SOCO Turns Narrow Plot into Courtyard House

SOCO has completed Casa Iriarte, a 230 m² house in the historic centre of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria that converts the constraints of a narrow plot into what the architects call "an opportunity for spatial invention." Scheduled for 2026 and photographed by Simone Marcolin, the project demonstrates how tightly bounded urban sites in the Canary Islands' oldest districts can still support generous domestic space.

The design's central move is an off-centre courtyard. According to SOCO's text, it "brings light and air into the interior and organises the spaces around it." Rather than treating the courtyard as a decorative void, the architects use it as the organisational device that governs the plan.

What does the narrow plot change?

Everything, in SOCO's account. The firm states plainly: "The narrowness of the site becomes a starting point for the design, shaping the layout, ventilation and everyday use of the house." Three consequences follow:

• Layout. Rooms gather around the off-centre courtyard rather than lining a conventional corridor.
• Ventilation. The courtyard drives airflow through the deep, narrow floor plan.
• Use. Everyday domestic routines adapt to the courtyard-centred organisation.

The architects describe the result as "an open setting where economy and pleasure overlap." That phrase signals the project's dual intent: a budget-conscious plan that nonetheless privileges the sensory qualities of light, air and openness over maximised enclosed area.

Who designed it, and with what materials?

Iñaki Pérez Anzola and Pablo Delgado Núñez led the project as lead architects for SOCO. Three manufacturers supplied the principal building systems: Cortizo, Kerakoll and Viroc.

Those names indicate a specific material economy. Cortizo supplies aluminium window and façade systems suited to the courtyard's ventilation strategy. Kerakoll, an Italian manufacturer, produces building chemicals, renders and green-building mortars. Viroc — a cement-bonded particle board composed of wood particles and cement, commonly left exposed — is frequently used for floors, stairs and wall linings in projects that favour raw, durable surfaces.

Simone Marcolin photographed the completed house. His images document how the off-centre courtyard distributes daylight through a plan that conventional party-wall housing on similar plots would have left dark at its centre.

Why does the courtyard sit off-centre?

Placing the courtyard off-centre, rather than on the geometric middle of the plot, allows the rooms around it to vary in size and character. The architects state that this organisation "break[s] with conventional room divisions," replacing the sequence of closed, separately programmed rooms with an open domestic landscape.

The strategy matters for the historic centre of Las Palmas, one of Spain's most significant colonial-era urban fabrics. Narrow plots with party walls are the default condition there. Casa Iriarte shows that such plots do not require compromise plans; the constraint itself can generate the architecture.

What does the project signal?

Casa Iriarte, at 230 m² and dated 2026, joins a growing body of courtyard-based housing retrofits and new builds in dense historic cores across Spain, where ventilation and daylight — increasingly critical in Canary Islands climates — depend on plan geometry rather than mechanical systems.

SOCO's own framing points forward: the firm positions economy and pleasure not as trade-offs but as overlapping conditions. Whether that model travels to tighter, lower-budget plots will test the idea's reach beyond Gran Canaria.