Fran Silvestre Designs A Home Outside Barcelona In Dialogue With Nature

Spanish architect Fran Silvestre is a master of geometry. At first, his minimalist white constructions appear to be abstract interlopers in the natural landscape. But there’s a rigorous, sensitive logic behind every plan. Such is the case at a 3,875-square-foot, three-bedroom house in Caldes de Malavella, just north of Barcelona.

Long and narrow, the 1/4-acre plot within Camiral, a luxury golf resort, could have been limiting. But for Silvestre, CEO of Valencia-based Fran Silvestre Arquitectos, and Carlos Lucas, his director of architecture, it was an opportunity to create something different: two offset volumes poised amid lush rolling hills. “The house adapts precisely to the site, with each gesture conceived according to light, silence, and views,” Lucas says. “The geometry dialogues with the place in a quiet yet powerful way.”

The reinforced-concrete structure, coated in a white-finish external thermal insulation system, supports a cantilevering upper volume, which shades a pool and terrace below and allows residents to inhabit separate planes, their interiors collaborated on with designer Alfaro Hofmann. A skylit, white porcelain–floored staircase that Lucas calls the heart of the house links the three planes, which comprise a subterranean multipurpose area, ground-level social spaces, and the upper bedroom floor, its enclosed balcony framing views of the golf course and beyond through a dramatic 10-by-26-foot rectangle. Masterful geometry indeed.