la mirateca completes monolithic 'house behind a wall'

‘house behind a wall’ by la mirateca

Composed as a monolithic concrete volume within the city of Elche in Alicante, House behind a wall is the latest residential project by Spanish practice La Mirateca. The most striking features of the architecture include a lack of openings across its façades, a multilevel distribution, and a sloping outline defining one of its sides. The solid form responds to the client’s need for privacy while the ‘topographic’ design recalls and adapts to the artificial ‘mountainscape’ created on-site before intervention.

‘The concrete construction determines the shape of the building while allowing it to be molded plastically so that the transition between the different heights remains seamless and not divided through an orthodox superimposition of floors,‘ explains La Mirateca.

all images © Alejandro Gómez Vives

sculpting the volume with a sense of continuity

Program-wise, La Mirateca incorporated three patios around House behind a wall for social and recreational uses, especially at night, and a sheltered outdoor space defined by the main building and dividing walls. ‘In this sense, the main facade is transformed into a large 24-meter edge beam capable of flying over the ground, creating a shaded area below it and hiding behind it the most intimate spaces of the habitat,’ continue the architects.

This sense of continuity also materializes into a large, sculptural ramp, opening up a leisurely view of the landscape of the distant Spanish city. Approaching the main building area, large-format glazing fronts the first level where the living space is housed, offering a seamless interior-exterior relationship.