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      The Olive Houses are off-grid retreats hidden in Mallorca's mountains

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      Craggy boulders jut through walls in these off-grid guesthouses that architecture studio Mar Plus Ask has built in Mallorca, Spain, for creatives in need of a quiet escape.Tucked away high up in Mallorca’s Tramuntana mountains, The Olive Houses are run year-round by Mar Plus Ask as a silent refuge where solo architects, writers and artists can stay free from interruption.

      The pair of houses are enclosed by a dense grove of thousand-year-old olive trees, which at points is interrupted by huge boulders resembling “natural monumental sculptures”.

      Keen to leave this rugged terrain largely untouched, Mar Plus Ask set about designing two modest structures – one that accommodates sleeping quarters, the other cooking facilities – that look like homes in the surrounding landscape.

      “Our first reaction was that only if we could come up with something that would add something in a respectful and beautiful way, would we ever consider building,” explained the studio, which is led by Mar Vicens and Ask Anker Aistrup.
      “However, it was calming that the functions we were looking to build wouldn’t be much different than those of the existing structures found in the area.”

      One of the houses is partially embedded into an existing stone terrace, which the studio hopes will help the structure keep cool during the warm summer months.
      A sliding teakwood door can be pushed back to reveal a grand arched entrance. Inside, the house has a series of smooth, sloping surfaces similar to those seen within a cave.
      The walls, floor and ceiling have been exclusively rendered in blush-pink stucco, as the studio felt the colour was complementary to the pale green shade seen on the underside of an olive tree leaf.

      A corner of the house has been built around a craggy boulder that the studio left in situ, illuminated by a skylight directly above.
      “To us, the stone became a piece of art – suddenly the house was more about sculpting its backdrop and being its lightbox,” explained the studio.

      Tiny camping pods by Andrea Zittel serve as a creative refuge in the California desert

      Just beside the boulder, an overhead shower has been fitted, while a single bed lies on the other side of the house. Outside there’s also a large sink, the basin of which is formed from rock.

      Mar Plus Ask created the second house by renovating a dilapidated shed on site that was once used to store tools.
      Surfaces throughout are instead covered in deep-purple stucco, a hue that the studio thought was more akin to the dark, glossy topside of an olive leaf.

      The structure was initially deemed too narrow to hold cooking facilities but the studio ended up carving a wide opening into one of its 60-centimetre-thick walls, which is able to accommodate a chunky prep counter and a sink.
      Guests will also have access to two gas burners and a wood-fire oven – water, like that used to service the shower and sink in the first house, is sourced from a nearby spring. This house also includes a toilet.

      Mar Plus Ask was established in 2015 and works between offices in Copenhagen, Berlin, Mallorca and Valencia.
      The studio’s Olive Houses project isn’t the only place where creatives can go to clear their heads. Back in 2016, Andrea Zittel launched Wagon Station Encampment – a campsite near Joshua Tree Park, California, where artists and writers are allowed to play out their “desert fantasy”.
      The site includes 10 sleeping pods, a communal outdoor kitchen and open-air showers.
      Photography is by Piet Albert Goethals.

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      Two-storey bookshelf rises inside renovated Madrid house

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      Spanish architecture firm Zooco Estudio has covered the walls of this Madrid residence with bookshelves that span two levels.House 6 is a detached single-family home located in northern Madrid. Local studio Zooco Estudio overhauled the residence contrasting white interiors with pale wood cabinetry and herringbone patterned flooring.

      The centrepiece of the design is a white shelving unit that extends two floors and wraps around the walls of the house’s living room and dining area.

      On the lower level, the volume comprises dozens of rectangular cases for storing books, movies and electronics, including a mounted television. A series of narrow cubbies also occupy the space between a glass dining table and entryway creating storage for hanging apparel.

      “As a unifying element, a shelf rises colonising both living and lobby spaces,” the studio said. “This way we integrate aesthetic and functionality in one single element.”
      The shelves continue on the upper level with a rectangular volume along a hallway. Pendant light fixtures hang from the ceiling to illuminate the floor below.

      In the kitchen, pale oak fronts the cabinetry and details the base of a white kitchen island. White tiles form the splashback behind the sink and cover the rectangular range hood hanging above the island.

      Beta Ø Architects completes overhaul of X House in Madrid

      A spiral staircase with black metal steps is carved into the wall to create a sculptural focal point within the space.

      Upstairs the bedroom and bathrooms are concealed by a wall of slender wooden slats lacquered white. The narrow strips separate the master bedroom from the bathroom. A section of the millwork is intentionally left open to expose the shower.

      “A continuous view was required so you can see through the slats to the shower,” the studio added. “However, the private areas of the bathroom are completely hidden.”
      In the bathroom the studio has covered the walls and floors with white tiles and blue grouting. A geometric counter clad with blue tiles snakes across the ground and up the wall to form a storage closet in the space.

      Zooco Estudio is an architecture firm with offices in Madrid and Santander founded by Miguel Crespo Picot, Javier Guzmán Benito and Sixto Martín Martínez. The studio has also completed an art centre in Verín that comprises several granite buildings and a child play area built out of wood for a co-working office in Santa Monica, California.

      Other renovation projects in Madrid include a house with a permeable metal sculpture designed by Beta Ø Architects and an apartment by Lucas y Hernández Gil with sliding wall partitions.
      Photography is by Imagen Subliminal.
      Project credits:
      Project manager: Miguel Crespo Picot, Javier Guzmán Benito, Sixto Martín MartínezConstruction: Nimbo Proyectos S LLighting: Zooco EstudioFurniture design: Zooco Estudio

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      Forte Forte fashion boutique in Madrid is filled with shapely details

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      A pale geometric relief wall offsets brass and green-marble decor details in this Madrid boutique designed by creative duo Giada Forte and Robert Vattilana.Madrid’s Forte Forte store occupies a corner plot in Salamanca – a glamorous district of the city known for its boulevards lined with luxury fashion boutiques and upscale restaurants.

      It was designed by the brand’s co-founder, Giada Forte and her partner, art director Robert Vattilana.

      The pair devised opulent interiors for Forte Forte’s London, Milan, Tokyo and Paris stores, but wanted the new Madrid branch to have a more restrained aesthetic that still offered moments of “poetry and feminine delicacy”.

      “[The store] is charged with a sensual energy polarized on the offset of masculine and feminine, curves and angles, geometry and sentiment,” Forte and Vattilana explained.
      “There’s a recognizable grammar of surfaces, treatments, colors uniting the different spaces that’s born from our creative dialogue, but the narration takes on a different metric and tone.”

      An off-white relief wall that features a haphazard array of raised geometric shapes runs down one side of Forte Forte’s ground level.
      A structural column in the store has been given a similarly geometric form. It extends up through a circular opening in the ceiling that has been backlit to look as if natural light is beaming through from the outdoors.

      At the centre of the store is a low-lying semicircular bench perched on a mottled pink rug. The flooring that runs underneath has been inlaid with mismatch cuts of grooved and plain stone, as well as tiny triangles made from emerald-green Iranian marble.
      The same veiny marble has been used to make the store’s door handle and its rounded service counter.
      Directly above the counter, thin brass stems have been loosely arranged in a grid-like formation to form a hanging sculpture. It supports a handful of warped glass orbs.

      Heavy gold velvet curtains help screen-off the cylindrical changing booth that dominates the rear corner of the store.
      Brass doors punctuated by small portholes can be pulled back to grant access to the inside of the booth, where teal-blue carpet has been fitted to match the blue underside of the curtains.

      Fashion sits alongside found objects at the Forte Forte boutique in Milan

      Garments are hung from spindly brass rails, while accessories and lifestyle items are presented on a set of brass shelves held up by a pole that’s been made to resemble an oversized bolt.

      A curving blush-pink staircase leads up to the store’s second floor. Forte and Vattilana have used the expansive landing that sits between the staircase’s two flights of steps as an additional display area.
      It’s dressed with a huge leafy plant, another brass clothes rail and an organically-shaped mirror.

      Forte Forte opened its first brick-and-mortar store in 2018 – until then, the brand’s clothing could exclusively be purchased online.
      The inaugural store in Milan has been decorated with a curious array of found objects including a nude sketch, a lump of coral and a bust of the goddess Venus that came from an old French foundry.

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      Cabinette co-working space in Valencia plays off Jacques Tati's film Playtime

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      The 1960s film Playtime by renowned French director Jacques Tati set the tone for this whimsical co-working office that Masquespacio has designed in Valencia.Cabinette is a co-working space for creatives set inside a mixed-use building in Valencia’s La Fuensanta neighbourhood.

      It takes over a ground-floor unit that was originally fit-out to serve as an apartment. Leaving the existing bathroom facilities in place, interiors studio Masquespacio reconfigured the rest of the floor plan to accommodate a series of work areas for Cabinette’s members.

      The studio’s founders, Christophe Penasse and Ana Milena Hernández Palacios, wanted to give the 200-square-metre space a retrofuturist aesthetic that’s attractive to millennials but also makes “a clear wink to the past”.

      A particular point of reference was Playtime – a 1967 comedy film directed by Jaques Tati that follows character Monsieur Hulot as he navigates a gadget-filled version of future Paris.
      It’s revered for its satirical take on modern life and was also included in Dezeen’s list of 10 films with amazing architecture.

      Masquespacio creates colour-clashing interior for phone-repair shop in Valencia

      “We once visited a museum installation here in Valencia where they showcased some fragments of the movie, especially a moment where the leading actor goes to a meeting,” Penasse told Dezeen.

      In the film, when Hulot arrives at the meeting, he enters a huge office where each employee’s desk is closed in by a cabinet-lined box – a feature which inspired Cabinette’s name.
      Penasse and Palacious have similarly divided desks in the co-working space, but instead of individual boxes have erected low-lying partitions.
      As with the interior of the boxes in Playtime, the desks and chairs in Cabinette are a pastel green-blue colour.

      The same colour features across the floor, as well as the counter, tiled splashback and a couple of cupboards in the kitchen, which sits in the corner of the room.
      Walls and part of the floor here are painted chocolate-brown, complementing the steel stools from Masquespacio’s Déjà-Vu collection that appear beside the counter. They each feature tiers of brown, ochre and blue fringing.
      Another wall in Cabinette is clad in mirrored panels, while one on the far side of the office is a bright lilac hue. It’s decorated with various graphic-print canvases and rows of illuminated tube lights.

      A set of stairs leads up to a mezzanine where there are a pair of intimate meeting rooms that members can use for group work or take private phone calls.
      They’re screened off by the same shiny silver curtains that hang in front of the full-height windows at ground level that look through to an outdoor terrace.

      There is also a more formal boardroom that features deep-purple surfaces. The central lacquered-wood table is surrounded by Masquespacio’s gold-framed Arco chairs, which are upholstered in burnt-orange velvet.
      The studio’s eye-shaped Wink lights are also mounted on the wall.

      Masquespacio was established in 2010 by Penasse and Ana Milena Hernández Palacios. The studio has applied its colourful aesthetic to a number of projects.
      These include a phone repair shop that features a clashing mix of salmon-pink and turquoise surfaces, and a tropical green and maroon restaurant that offers Brazilian-Japanese cuisine.
      Photography is by Luis Beltran.

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      Casa Grande Hotel in Spain occupies 18th-century stone manor house

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      Grey stone walls and jet-black joinery meet to form the monochromatic interiors of this boutique hotel in northern Spain designed by Francesc Rifé Studio.Casa Grande Hotel is situated in Granon, a tiny village in Spain’s La Rioja region that’s populated by just a few hundred people.
      The hotel’s owners – a couple with two daughters – moved to the area from a busy tourist town on Spain’s Costa Brava, having grown tired of their hectic lifestyles.

      They had the idea to open Casa Grande Hotel when they came across a vacant 18th-century manor house. Barcelona-based Francesc Rifé Studio was tasked with creating the hotel’s 11 intimate guest rooms and communal spaces.

      The studio decided to work with a “sober” palette of colours and materials that would “coexist with the story of the building peacefully” and draw attention to its historic features.

      “I think dark tones are always quieter and calmer than light colours and this project is asking to pause and breathe,” Francesc Rifé told Dezeen. “The new materials had to offer this aesthetic vision.”
      “There is nothing more gratifying and beautiful than deconstructing a forgotten building to recover the history that underlies it.”

      One of the building’s key historic features is its ashlar walls – a style of masonry that uses large, square-cut stones.
      These walls have been left exposed throughout Casa Grande Hotel’s ground-floor interior, freshened up with a coat of light-grey paint.
      “This technique also aims to provide a certain luminosity to rooms where the thickness of the walls often does not help the entry of natural light,” the studio explained.

      In the hotel’s restaurant, which serves dishes inspired by La Rioja’s regional cuisine, the brick walls have been paired with natural oak floors. Wooden dining tables and chairs have been dotted across the room.
      Nearby is a moody drinks area, where almost every surface – including the bar counter – has been lined with jet-black poplar wood. One wall is punctuated with a dramatically backlit wine cabinet.

      Stone surfaces continue to appear in the five bedrooms on the hotel’s first floor, but sit alongside brick and concrete walls which the studio had to introduce during the restoration works on the building.
      Black poplar wood has also been used again to create headboards and wardrobes.

      Some of the rooms come with in-built window desks that overlook the tiled roof of San Juan Bautista church, which is located directly next to the hotel.
      The six suite-style rooms on the hotel’s second floor each come with their own small lounge area, and feature loft-like ceilings with exposed beams.

      Francesc Rifé Studio also updated the exterior of Casa Grande Hotel, describing it as “perhaps the most monumental part of the project”.

      Blackened wood appears throughout R Apartment by Francesc Rifé Studio

      Windows that were “chaotically” arranged across one elevation of the building have been left in place but updated with graphic black-iron frames.

      An iron fence wraps around the lower half of the building, merging into a huge pivoting door that opens onto the Casa Grade Hotel’s outdoor terrace.
      “This element has a double meaning,” said the studio. “On the one hand, it reinforces the aesthetic narrative of the metal that has been used to design the windows and balconies, but at the same time, it hides different lateral openings that house machinery and electrical wiring.”

      Dark tones pervade several of Francesc Rifé Studio’s projects. Earlier this year, the studio completed a house in Mexico City that features slate-grey walls and huge black-aluminium shutters.
      Back in 2019, the studio also inserted a series of blackened wood partitions in a Valencian apartment.
      Photography is by David Zarzoso.

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      Golden wardrobe forms focal point of The Magic Box Apartment in Spain

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      A shiny brass wardrobe that’s meant to resemble a precious jewellery box features in this apartment near Barcelona designed by Raúl Sánchez Architects. The Magic Box Apartment is set within a two-storey home in the town of Viladecans and is occupied by a married couple and their two young daughters. The husband’s parents live on […] More

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      Alfondac is a multifunctional guest apartment in Catalonia with modular fittings

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      A modular unit encompasses all the domestic functions of this Catalonian guest apartment by architecture studio Aixopluc, leaving the rest of the floor plan empty for inhabitants to use as they wish. Aixopluc’s Alfondac guest apartment is situated in the Catalonian city of Reus in the Raval de Santa Anna neighbourhood. The 55-square-metre space takes […] More

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      Azab carries out colourful update of Inner Home apartment in Bilbao

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      A bubblegum-pink corridor and a forest green kitchen feature inside this Bilbao apartment, which architecture studio Azab has brightened up with bold hues. The flat is set inside a 1970s residential block and belongs to a young woman who, after living abroad for a few years, wanted to settle back in her home city of […] More