The Villas at La Manzanera

As agreed with the owner of the site, who was also the project developer, a special partial plan was drawn up for La Manzanera that would lead to the creation of low-density architecture built in harmony with the landscape, a natural amphitheatre consisting of terraces of olive trees sloping down to the sea. The special qualities of the immediate landscape of stone terraces, largely man-made, the natural amphitheatre derived from the valley formation, and the expressed will of formal creation, were all determining factors in the transformation of a magnificent natural landscape into one expressly rebuilt for vacation and leisure time.

However, over the years, the importance of this articulated plan has grown enormously for the Taller. Each building remains an essay in form and language, place and space. In La Manzanera, one can live and experience the transformations that have taken place in the history of contemporary architecture in a single place—from an Archigram-derived form to a critical regionalism expressed three-dimensionally, and, finally, to the recovery of a classical Mediterranean vocabulary.

Thus, Las Villas forms a core element of the global vision for the district of La Manzanera. In contrast with neighbouring projects such as La Muralla Roja, Xanadú, the Anfiteatro, and Plexus, this project, formed by an ensemble of houses set around a rotunda, is gently set back from the coast, on sloping terrain. Three of the five houses have a certain volume. The remaining two are smaller but have perceptibly adopted the same polygonal shape. Each entity has private, external grounds, bordered by pale stone walls that are similar to the houses’ façades.

Environmental awareness was a key factor in the design of the villas; taking advantage of the sloping topography, the scheme provides three residential typologies, all characterised by the use of vernacular motifs such as shuttered Mediterranean windows, arcades, and sloping tiled roofs. While Xanadú and La Muralla Roja become vivacious alternatives to the standard resort complex program, Las Villas follows a vernacular and organic approach.