Designing for the perimeter

The new Zubiaur Musika Eskola in Amorebieta-Etxano, on the outskirts of Bilbao, emerged from an architectural competition held in 2015. Conceived as both an addition and a reinterpretation of its context, the project establishes a clear dialogue with the existing facilities while asserting its own architectural identity.

Context Integration

The building transforms the existing dividing wall into an additional façade, completing and redefining the perimeter of the current complex. The original wall of the adjoining frontón ballcourt is preserved and elevated as the central protagonist of the intervention. By exposing and layering the successive walls, the project makes the passage of time legible, allowing traces of the site’s history to remain visible. In doing so, the design safeguards local heritage and collective memory, integrating them into the contemporary architectural language.

Once the formal autonomy of the neighboring cultural center is acknowledged, the Musika Eskola operates as an independent volume. It respects the orthogonality and abstraction of the surrounding structures, yet distinguishes itself as a singular and recognizable element within the ensemble.

Spatial Organization

The newly conceived façade-dividing wall is set apart from the main volume, generating a ground-floor patio and a vertical void that extends alongside the upper levels. The plan wraps around this courtyard, which functions both as a drainage basin and as a rainwater retention space in the event of flooding.

A subtle setback from the longitudinal façade creates a sheltered porch at ground level, marking the main entrance and reinforcing its civic presence. Above, the upper floors complete the program in the form of a regular three-story prism, arranged parallel to the new façade-wall and complemented by a projecting corbel. The compact floor plates maximize usable surface area, forming an efficient and clearly defined spatial container.

Façade & Staircase Design

To achieve fully open-plan interiors, the structural system is pushed to the perimeter, allowing the façade to act as a self-supporting envelope. This strategy liberates the interior from structural constraints, enhancing flexibility and spatial clarity.

The staircases are positioned outside the primary prism and enclosed in glass, heightening transparency and reinforcing the building’s abstract character. More than a circulation device, the stair becomes an architectural promenade: it frames views toward the adjacent park, reveals the scale of the internal courtyard, and underscores the building’s identity as an extended, cohesive, and singular spatial composition.

The post Zubiaur School of Music was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The post Spain is in Athens: Shaping Spaces was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The family house in Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, was complete in 2021. The determining elements for the design have been the dialogue between the natural terrain of the plot with its views. Simple lines and clear volumes, natural lighting and horizontal features combine harmoniously.

The access to the house is from the highest point of the plot and then following the outer slope of the land we cross the first garden through large stone platforms, which lead us directly to the access of the main volume.

The foyer reveals an interior patio that organizes the uses of the house, clearly dividing the day program: living room, dining room, kitchen and service area, and the night program with the bedrooms.

The day area has a spacious terrace with large windows where there is a gradual and fluid transition towards the garden and the pool, which is located at the lower level of the plot, thus providing a feeling of protection and privacy through the natural environment of the terrain.

The most intimate program – the night area –  oriented to the east, is made up of bedrooms, allowing maximum privacy. Under this wing of bedrooms is the cellar room.

FH2L Arquitectos

The post Hage House was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The apartment building, following the requirements of the mid-nineteenth century, is dated between 1902 and 1903. It is an industrial building, marked by the proximity to the train station. The building has a free floor plan, built with several bays of wooden supports independent from the adobe block partition and its solid brick facades.

The intervention is characterized by the formal purification of the complex typology. The latter is the result of a long floor plan, with bedrooms and outbuildings attached to interior patios, but with two facades immediately connected to Muro and Gamazo streets. The east façade is used for morning light for the bedrooms and the west façade for afternoon light for the living areas.

The intention of the project is the complete liberation of the facades, integrating all the service spaces in the less illuminated areas, generating a central amoeba, disaggregated, raised a few centimeters for technical reasons, to absorb the irregularities of a singular geometry.

The rest of the house is resolved by means of two pieces of furniture. These pieces of furniture follow the privacy of the spaces: The first one, slightly thicker, is attached to the dividing wall of the building, marking the transition from the public to the private area (dining room-pantry-laundry-dressing room). The second is arranged like a herringbone (kitchen-hall-access cabinet-room) crossing the house through the central part.

The house responds to a contemporary way of life, eliminating the typology associated with the old ways of living, but, at the same time, incorporating inherited elements, such as the wooden supports, and the brick east façade or the views over calle Muro. This is intended to add a new layer, which does not completely erase the traces of the past but establishes a conversation, adding a new chapter to the contemporary discourse on housing.

Alvaro Moral,
Daniel González,
Manuel Cuadrado

Javier Bravo

The post Apartment in Valladolid was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The all-day bar, on the ground floor and basement of a building on a busy street, bordering between the Realejo neighborhood and the center of the city of Granada presents volume and size restrictions: a narrow bay, deep section and only one possible access.

Considering the context, in an age dominated by social networks and individuality, to provide the place with a contemporary social character, it was decided to investigate one of the most popular types of vernacular architecture in the south of the Iberian Peninsula: the cave. This type of habitat was used as a natural refuge or as a home throughout history, in different cultures. Locally, it was the result of self-construction processes and topographic forms that, since the last century, have been linked to art and flamenco. This historical baggage makes the cave a contemporary cultural catalyst and a territorial symbol.

Social networks have given a new meaning to the experience of leisure, both in the user’s relationship with space and in the image that is transmitted. Leisure is no longer reduced to a shared moment but acquires the character of an event where the user is the protagonist. Ambrosía, in this case, is the scenographic staging that seeks to generate identity in the collective imagination of the city. It is through the changing lighting, the adaptable furniture, and the rough texture of the premises that the experience of freedom is achieved, in a space conceived to function at times as a bar, as a stage for concerts or a venue for screenings.

GRX Arquitectos

The post Ambrosía was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The building is defined from a structural frame that organizes the spaces and the different parts of the program, as well as the facade itself.

The main parts of the house are concentrated on the first floor, leaving the ground floor for access and multipurpose space. On the first floor, the house is organized divided into three strips; the two opaque sides, understood as container walls for use, house the service and private parts, while the central strip is understood as a free space that is projected outwards.
The ground floor contains the main entrance, the access staircase, services and two large porches. The first one is for entrance and parking, and the second one, understood as another space in the house, another multipurpose living-dining room in relation to the garden and the pool.
The materiality of the building is reduced to the use of concrete as an expressive element of the construction system. Exposed concrete in structure and concrete bricks in facades, which also enter the interior.

Nordest Arquitectura

FilippoPoli

The post House in Vilablareix was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The project consists of the implementation of sports equipment typical of the Valencian community, such as Trinquet, in Gestalgar, located in the region of “Los Serranos”. This equipment will be accompanied by a Civic Center, which will complete the sport facility.

A Trinquet is a piece of equipment with a morphology so defined by the activity that must be carried out in it that it is inevitable to understand the typological characteristics that can help us understand which are the elements that make up the space.

Playing a “pilota valenciana” game or going as a spectator is an action with a more active component than other sports. So much so that, for example, the vast majority of Trinquets have a café or bar attached, which you sometimes have to go through to get to the “pilota” court.

Another important part of the “pilota valenciana” is education, as teaching the game to new generations is essential so that the sport does not lose fans and players are born. Therefore, the fact that there may be classrooms in the Trinquet dedicated to teaching could help to ensure that education is implemented within the complex.

Sergio Varea Giménez

The post Sports and Civic Center in Gestalgar was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The character of the Aigües de Vilajuïga bottling factory, recently renovated in the outskirts of Barcelona, cannot be understood without considering the underground running water: Since 1904, the aquifer of natural sparkling water has never run dry. The water wells, and other constructions, marking the terrain, reflect this underground universe. How, then, to make visible something that is hidden inside the earth?

The commission involved the update of the factory facilities, the wells, and the warehouses, as well as the addition of new uses: training rooms, exhibition spaces and offices.

Not much was built on the surface, to preserve the atmosphere of the place. What was highlighted was precisely what time had forgotten, and perhaps that is the reason why it had remained in place: An old farmhouse from 1800, a few small blocks, a modernist building … All were cleaned, ordered, discovered, and had every detail brought to prominence.

A different course of action was taken underground. One needed to get closer to the water, feel the experience of entering the depths of the terrain, descending, discovering the water in its midst, making the invisible literally visible.

In the middle of the garden, hidden behind a wall of cypress trees, was a large circular well sinking more than 6m deep into the ground. This provided an opportunity to descend and get closer to the water.

 The perimeter of the well was dug around until its curved wall was revealed, making visible the side that was previously hidden in the earth. A new passage, through this wall, allows one to enter the inside of the well, where the reflections of the water now return to flood the brick deposit, as a memory.

The rest was to cover the garden again, as if nothing had happened, and to bring light and people inside, through skylights and ramps. The light falls vertically, while people descend almost horizontally, taking the time necessary to go from light to darkness, from outside to inside. What appears on the surface only a circular pond, and the ramp flanking its border.

two-bo  – Luis Twose

José Hevia

The post Aigües de Vilajuïga was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The starting point of the project is the replacement of the existing house in the outskirts of Madrid with a new single-family house. The pool stays but stands out and becomes visible from near all the spaces inside the house having maximum exposure to the sun. The house has also an optimal view of the garden.

The core of the house is developed through the patio-staircase, dividing the program into two floors. On the ground floor are the living room and kitchen. These rooms have large glasses (windows) that overlook the pool and garden, thus maintaining a great spatial fluidity.The first floor is divided into two wings communicated through an open walkway. One wing has the master bedroom and office and on the opposite side the children’s bedrooms.

FH2L Arquitectos

Amores Pictures

The post House in Mirasierra was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.

The remodeling of the old city center of Ódena, in the outskirts of Barcelona, which is the result of an architectural competition, introduces a new structure that organizes and defines public space with simple means and formal clarity. The project spread a uniform stone paving throughout the whole study area, where vehicles and people coexist, prioritizing pedestrians.

The economic situation of small towns such as Òdena does not allow them to devote many resources to the maintenance of public space; once they obtain a subsidy or help to carry out a project, they must certify that functionality, quality of the materials, proposed technical solutions and their implementation are as successful as possible, in order to ensure good use, durability and low maintenance costs. The commission, therefore, was not only to give a solution to the plaza as a central and symbolic element of the town, but also to develop a system of interventions in the public space (pavements, furniture, lighting, trees, facilities, commissioning, etc.) that could extend, in the future, to other streets in the urban core.

Prior to its remodeling, Ódena’s Plaza Mayor was not in fact a square but simply the center point where the six main streets cutting across the old city center intersected and converged. This condition, added to the intensely sloping ground between the north and south ends, turned the place into an incoherent accumulation of road crossings that left small, scattered and isolated spaces. Citizen use of the central space of the municipality was thus fragmented, greatly hampering the development of community life.

To reverse the image of a road junction where cars were the protagonists and left the remaining urban spaces to pedestrians, the project extended a uniform stone paving throughout the whole affected area. This device does not isolate or delimit the center but instead joins all the spaces of the square into one, where people can move easily and safely, having priority over vehicles. To confront level differences and soften the slopes, to be used as meeting places (mainly in front of the Church and the City Hall), a common system is used that is deployed throughout the area in the form of stands or stairs. These new places, in turn, become shared benches, playgrounds, communal spaces and meeting points. The result is a continuous public space, well connected and essentially empty, ready to become the stage upon which a renewed urban community life is projected.

The town of Òdena is located on the border between two geological formations: stoneware and marl. Their encounter favors the presence of chalk, a material that characterizes the geology of the place. There is a quarry of this mineral in Òdena, exploited since the 19^th century, and still active today. The castle and the walled enclosure of the municipality, dated in the 10th century, are located on a mound of this stone that is sourced as the predominant construction material. This mineral, with its typical grey-whitish hues, is a reference to the town and it is closely linked to its landscape, its history and its social development. The cracks included in the project to break down and structure the uniform paving spreading across the plaza allow this whiteness to emerge from within, symbolizing and enhancing a meaning consistent with the town for generations, that will now have its own representative memorial space at the Plaza Mayor.

SCOB (Sergi Carulla and Oscar Blasco)

Adrià Goula

The post Remodeling Ódena’s Plaza Mayor was originally published on ek magazine | Architectural Publications | ek magazine – Architectural Publications.