Detached Villa · Benahavís

Located high in the hills of Benahavís, in the natural enclave of the Montemayor Valley, the Cuatro House overlooks one of the splendid views of the southern Mediterranean landscape.  We work with a steep plot, with more than twelve meters of unevenness and a trapezoidal geometry with soft curved boundaries as a result of the urban anthropization of the mountainous area.

We propose a house that integrates, respects and mimics the landscape: in our first visit we knew that the protagonists of our intervention should be the panoramic views of such a majestic natural enclave.  We knew that the building should shelter in its topography; let itself be enveloped by it; let itself be stripped of any protagonism...

We present a house that is generated in successive arcs of circles that carve the abruptness of the hill in which it is circumscribed; they are accommodated in it and are enlisted in the own curved generatrix of the boundary of access to the plot.  The radial modulation domesticates and terraces the mountainous set; each segment of arc shapes the spaces of the dwelling, and launches successive views to specific sections of the landscape environment.  To walk through the dwelling is to recognize the sequences of fragments of the landscape.

Access to the house is vertical, in a downward direction.  Only a slight visor rises above the urban level.  It becomes the glass vestibule of access to the built complex.  With parking for 3 vehicles.  A core of bare stairs and a panoramic elevator introduce us into the heart of the house.  On one side, a crack of light that nakedly shows the geology of the environment; on the other side, the imposing views of the valley of Montemayor.  In between: our home.

Like a new geological stratum, the house is built with concrete mixed with the earth of the place: allegorically, the memorial of the natural enclave petrifies time and sediments it in a new composition; this time, architectural.  In this way, the Cuatro House becomes the autobiography of the place itself; a self-recognition of the very nature of the Montemayor valley.