I Premio de Arquitectura Miguel Martín-Fernández de la Torre

The house is located in Agaete, in a beautiful fishing
village called Nuestra Señora de Las Nieves, in the West
of Gran Canaria. This small fishing village, with its white
buildings with blue doors and windows, offers unique
views of the port and the majestic topography of the
island and, beyond it, the Atlantic Ocean which offers
magical sunsets.
The first line of white and blue buildings, which is where
the house is located, is built like a continuous wall of
different heights where, occasionally, the limits are not
clearly visible between one building and another. The
house aims at being part of this continuity. To its rear, it
adopts the levelling given by the neighbouring buildings,
as if the urban sprawl of the village, naturally, introduced
itself into the house and created its frontage. The purpose
of this is to create the feeling that the house has always
been there, as part of the village, and promoting its
intrinsic attractiveness. To its front, the house adopts the
frontage established by local regulation; three levels, where
the first floor is projected fifty metres over the ground floor,
and the third floor setback from the rest of the frontage.
Based on this configuration, and differentiating itself from
the rest of houses, the house has large windows giving
views of the privileged landscape of its surroundings, so
that the impressive views become an infinite projection of
the interior spaces.
Inside, on the ground floor, there is a small commercial
premises and an apartment linked to the rest of the
house. On the first floor, the bedrooms and garage are
located, which are different shapes in order to adapt to the
geometry of the plot of land. On the second floor, which is
where the living room and kitchen are located, there is a
unique space that totally opens up to the terrace, created
by the setback on this level in relation to the frontage. On
this floor, the continuity of the kitchen furniture and the
concrete bench in the living room, which goes from inside
to outside, creating a spatial relationship between these
spaces which become one when the sliding terrace doors
are open.
Seen from the sea, the house preserves its original
intention of becoming part of the prevailing continuity
of the village but, at the same time, it offers the image of
something new and light.
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