House in Pozuelo de Alarcón by A-cero Architects

The balance on which rest the three principles defining this construction, beauty, firmness and utility give us the key to confront its forcefulness, which emerges as a great sculptural work. It is a plastic reality: the singularity of the house defines a researching purpose that places value on aesthetic originality and artistic excellence. It stands out for its geometric purity, material sophistication and compositional elegance. The travertine marble shell is understood as a refuge and protection of identity. The purity of shapes creates a complex that is consistent with a structure formed only by concrete walls with an absence of intermediate pillars. It stands on a plot situated on a longitudinal north-south axis that brings sunlight into all the rooms. The slope of the land allows all the storeys to have an issue to the outside. The entire architecture appears framed within an exceptional environment: a garden of generous dimensions continues the harmonious lines of the construction, like a soft rug dotted with abundant planters and flowerbeds. A large steel beam marks the entrance via a colossal door. Inside, the window concept disappears and turns into openings. The size is suitable, proportioned and appropriate, thus conferring importance to the open spaces, the soft colours and the clean lines of the finishes. Beauty is localised in essential and simple minutiae and finds emotion in the detail, becoming the axis on which its logic turns and the point of support for its aesthetic projection. The visual experience of brightness and colour impregnates the architecture with its placid and unanimous sensibility. There is an evident link between the rooms and their outward continuity, with routes marked by the absence of doors, which are replaced by panels. Noteworthy in this line is the 17-metre window that shifts inwards, opening up the living room to the garden via one of the laterals. The rooms are comfortable, ample, with slight decorations and everything reduced to essentials, through volumes situated on two axes and two floors with a basement housing the garage in a startling design, the gym, a cellar, the music room and the indoor swimming pool. Revealing great skill in the layout, we find on the ground floor a large cylinder in marble, a material present in all the rooms on this floor, which organises what develops around it: the living rooms, dining rooms and service zone joined via a staircase with a magnificent red backdrop from which hangs a work of art in grand display and with the upper floor housing the bedrooms, the bathrooms finished in ash wood and the library, arranged as a great box of books, around a glass walkway overlooking the main drawing room.