The house is located in Ayora, a municipality located in the southwest of the Valencian Community with a constructed area of 230 square meters.
Its urban nucleus extends around a castle located on a mountainous hill of 640 meters of altitude. House on Mountainside Overlooked by Castle is one of the latest works by Fran Silvestre Arquitectos.
The main objective of the project is to achieve the integration of the building in its surroundings, a curious place in the Spanish geography where the dialogue between nature and artifice suggests new declines.
The rocky characteristics and the unevenness of the terrain constitute challenges masterfully overcome by the architect when constructing a building that perfectly matches the slope of the hillside.
The shape adapts to the environment thanks to an asymmetric structure achieved through a play of contrasts of planes and smooth volumes.
The color chosen for the project is the pristine white of quicklime, the same white that throughout the 20th century changed the image of many towns in nearby Castilla-La Mancha.
The candor seems to reinforce that exchange between what is made by man and the nature that is reflected there. Thus, the construction has the same primacy of the massif over the span that takes advantage of the site to arrange its holes and integrate without difficulty in the abrupt fragmentation of the environment.
The interior distribution of the house is characterized by the division of space into three levels and is articulated around the vertical core of the circulation.
On the ground floor, the lobby, garage, and cellar support the remaining volumes of the construction on their structure.
The intermediate level has two rooms while the living room, study, and another bedrooom that are located on the highest level of the house. From here a skylight floods the central nucleus of the house with light and a terrace opens onto a panoramic view over the roofs and the Ayora valley.
Photographs: Fran Silvestre Arquitectos