Radical beauty

In his Jacaranda house, José Francisco García-Sánchez works with sparing use of materials and well thought-out forms. He thus places his villa in the tradition of Spanish modernism.

His Jacaranda House is radical, says architect José Francisco García-Sánchez. Radical in its materiality, radical in its symbolism, in its reference to the landscape, in its abstraction, even in its use of natural light. It is also impressively beautiful, and García-Sánchez doesn’t say that.

The location of the Jacaranda house is breathtaking. The villa is situated on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar National Park near the Andalusian port city of Almería. In order to be able to build on the steep plot, the architect and clients had it terraced and the terraces fortified with balates, the traditional dry stone walls.

The architect has placed a cubic two-storey building on the largest of the terraces. From the ground floor, residents can access the terrace facing the sea. They can then access the large outdoor area of Villa Jacaranda. This connects almost seamlessly to the large living and dining area with open kitchen, which takes up almost the entire first floor. At the opposite end, the outdoor area merges into an infinity pool. Behind it, the vast landscape opens up with the Mediterranean Sea at the foot of the hill.

The upper floor is at the ground level of the next higher terrace. Access to the house is therefore from here. The garage integrated into the body of the house is also accessed from this level. The three bedrooms of the Jacaranda house are also located on the upper floor.

José Francisco García-Sánchez uses floor-to-ceiling glass windows to open up the first floor of the villa on two sides. For this reason, the architect placed five large polygonal pillars in front of the window front on the slope side of the house, which bear the load of the upper floor. At the same time, they provide weather protection for the glass walls. To achieve this, García-Sánchez shaped each of the pillars differently so that they provide optimum protection from the sun and wind. The pillars also serve as a design element. Depending on the perspective, they appear massive and solid or almost slender. On the upper floor, on the other hand, a trellis of narrow square pillars on the valley side serves as sun protection for the bedrooms.

A total of three staircases connect the different levels of Jacaranda House. In addition to the main staircase in the center, there are two service staircases at the ends. With this layout of the villa, José Francisco García-Sánchez also wants to question classic routes of movement in the house, which have a starting point and an end point. In Jacaranda House, theoretically infinite paths can be followed on changing routes. All rooms can also be entered or exited through more than one entrance. They must therefore always be understood as passageways at the same time. This form of passage, says the architect, contributes significantly to the feeling of living in the house.

Only at first glance does the outer skin of the Jacaranda House appear uniform. Then the observer notices that the architect has unified the brick and concrete areas of the façade using white paint. While the upper floor is made of small-scale and irregular brickwork, the other areas of the façade are made of concrete. However, the formwork joints repeat the transverse rectangles of the bricks on a larger scale, creating a formal connection between the two areas. With this combination of concrete and brick, José Francisco García-Sánchez refers to a specific building tradition in Spain from the 1960s and 1970s. The architect cites Javier Carvajal, Fernando Higueras and Miguel Fisac in particular as role models.

Incidentally, the Jacaranda House is not only radical and beautiful, it also strives for sustainability. It generates energy using photovoltaics and collects service water on its many terraces and patios.

Red instead of white, Portugal instead of Spain: Ricardo Bak Gordon’s “Casa Azul” is no less dramatic than the Jacaranda House.