simplicity love: House in Monasterios, Spain

Located in Monasterios, Spain, this house by Ramon Esteve Estudio adapts to its surrounding landscape with its structure, consisting of a series of massive stone walls and connected volumes of different levels.

Simplicity of pure geometry, clean lines and floor to ceiling transparencies define the interiors and their extension to exterior courtyards, semi covered spaces and wooden decks.

Photography © Mayte Piera

Description from Ramon Esteve Estudio

The house is located in an elevated area, from which it dominates a hillside leading down to the sea. This view marks the direction the walls will take and, in an abstract form, define the project. The house is structured as a compaction of volumes of varying heights, and the form established by the main walls.

The articulating space volume of this sequence is obtained from opening courts and patios in the central space of the house. A series of open courtyards are formed, covered in its perimeter like an atrium, in search of the access to the house, obtaining different perceptions of the house.

The views from any point intersect and are never interrupted along the permeable sequence at the end of which, limited between glass membranes, is the lobby. Thus, it creates an approach path that exposes the more intimate side of the house so that, once inside, you discover the long views over the hillside to the sea.

Among the great defining walls, the space is closed with large glass panels protected with wooden movable planes, graduating the closing level of each piece.

The housing program is focused very clearly in the direction marked by the walls, and volumes depend on the spatial hierarchy of spaces. Two wooden emerging volumes, materialized by the chimneys, mark the counterpoint to the horizontality that defines the entire house.