# Balzar Architects - full text > Balzar Architects is an author architecture practice founded in Valencia, Spain, in 2018, working internationally across architecture, interior design and landscape, with projects in Spain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Bali. This file carries the complete text of the studio guides and of every project record, so that it can be quoted directly rather than paraphrased. Generated from the site database. --- ## About Balzar Architects https://balzararchitects.com/studio/about/ Balzar Architects (legal name Balzar Proyectos SL) is an author architecture practice founded in Valencia, Spain, in 2018. The studio is led by its founders — Txema García Ballester, Principal Architect, and Laura Moreno Albuixech, CEO — with José María García Zarco as Consulting Director. The team numbers around twenty people working across architecture, interior design and landscape. ### What "author practice" means A single, coherent architectural intelligence carries each project from its first idea to its last construction detail. The studio does not separate design from delivery or hand projects between departments. Form is understood as the consequence of construction — proportion, measure and light are the instruments, and the studio takes on work where that position can hold. ### Where the studio works Based in Valencia, the studio builds across Spain — Valencia, Madrid, the Balearic Islands, Alicante, Murcia, Málaga — and internationally in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Bali. The archive counts more than 30 projects, from apartment renovations in Valencia's Eixample to a 125,000 m² tower development in Kuwait City. ### Selected work Built: Los Olivos House (Quesa, 2023), a 350 m² steel-frame Passive House with an 18-metre glass span. GE Apartment (Valencia, 2025), a 300 m² renovation on Calle Grabador Esteve. Expormim Office (Valencia, 2025). 1928 Penthouse (Valencia, 2022). Alfinach Development (Puzol, 2025), three industrialised houses. In progress: Barzakh Tower and Round House (Kuwait), a large private house in Saudi Arabia, houses in La Moraleja (Madrid), Dénia, El Campello and Cala Tarida (Ibiza), and mixed-use work in Langzhong (Sichuan, China). ### Services Concept Design, Design Development, Construction Documents, Interior Design, Construction Supervision, Landscape Design, Tender Support, Project Management, Product Design and Brand Environments. ### Contact Balzar Architects, Valencia, Spain. Phone +34 963 607 621. Instagram @balzararquitectos. The studio works in English, Spanish and Chinese. --- ## Commissioning a private house with Balzar Architects https://balzararchitects.com/studio/commissioning-a-private-house/ Commissioning a house with Balzar Architects begins with a conversation about the site and the life the house has to hold, and ends with the studio directing construction on site. The same architectural intelligence carries the project through every stage. Nothing is designed and handed on. ### How the process starts The first step is a meeting, in Valencia or on site, to understand three things: the plot, the brief and the timeline. From that conversation the studio prepares a written proposal describing the scope of work, the phases, the team assigned and the schedule. Clients know from the first document who will work on their house and what each phase delivers. ### The phases, briefly A private house moves through four phases. Concept Design establishes the position of the house on its site, the section, the light and the material logic. Design Development turns that position into a fully resolved building, tested against structure, services and budget. Construction Documents produce the drawings and specifications a contractor prices and builds from. Construction Supervision keeps the studio on site until the house is delivered as it was conceived. Interior and landscape design run inside the same process rather than being added at the end — the houses are conceived as complete environments. A fuller description of each phase is published at "What each phase of a project includes". ### How long it takes Design and permitting for a private house in Spain typically take between twelve and eighteen months depending on the municipality, followed by eighteen to thirty months of construction depending on size and site. The studio gives a project-specific schedule in the proposal and updates it at every phase gate. Licence timelines vary widely between municipalities — the studio manages the application and builds realistic margins into the plan rather than optimistic ones. ### What the studio expects from a client Decisions at the right moments. The process concentrates client decisions at the end of each phase, so the project advances without demanding constant attention. Between those gates the studio works, documents and presents. Changes are absorbed best in Concept and Design Development — the process is structured so that everything important is decided before construction prices are fixed. ### Where the studio builds Balzar Architects is based in Valencia and builds across Spain — including Madrid, the Balearic Islands, Alicante and Murcia — and internationally in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Bali. Current work includes houses in La Moraleja (Madrid), Dénia, El Campello and Cala Tarida (Ibiza), residences in Kuwait, and a large private house in Saudi Arabia. --- ## What each phase of a project includes https://balzararchitects.com/studio/what-each-phase-includes/ Every Balzar Architects project moves through defined phases, each closing with a documented deliverable and a client decision. This is what each phase contains and what a client receives at the end of it. ### Concept Design The phase where the project's position is established. The studio studies the site — topography, orientation, climate, planning constraints, material culture — and develops the section, the massing and the material logic of the building. The client receives a concept document: drawings, physical or digital models, material references and a first cost and schedule frame. Everything that follows develops this concept rather than replacing it. ### Design Development The concept becomes a fully resolved building. Structure and services are coordinated with the studio's consulting engineers, dimensions are fixed, materials are specified from samples rather than images, and the budget is tested against real quantities. The client receives a developed design package: coordinated plans, sections and elevations, material specifications and an updated cost estimate. This is the phase where changes are cheapest and most welcome — the studio structures the process so decisions land here, not on site. ### Construction Documents The building is described completely enough to be priced and built without interpretation. Working drawings, construction details, schedules of finishes, and the technical specifications a contractor bids against. In Spain this phase includes the documentation required for the building licence. The quality of this package is what protects the budget during construction — ambiguity in drawings becomes cost on site. ### Construction Supervision The studio stays on the project until the keys. Site visits at a rhythm set by the construction schedule, review of contractor submittals, resolution of the questions every construction produces, and control that what is built matches what was drawn. Houses like Los Olivos in Quesa and the Alfinach houses near Valencia were delivered under this model — the same team that drew the first section approved the last detail. ### Interior, landscape and beyond Interior design and landscape are phases of the same project, not separate commissions. Furniture, lighting, joinery and planting are developed inside the architectural logic — at Expormim's offices in Valencia and the 1928 Penthouse the interiors carry the architecture rather than decorating it. For clients who want it, the studio also provides tender support and project management. --- ## Building a house in Ibiza and the Balearics https://balzararchitects.com/studio/building-in-ibiza-and-the-balearics/ Balzar Architects designs and directs houses in the Balearic Islands from its base in Valencia, with a residence currently under construction above Cala Tarida in Ibiza. Building well on the islands asks for three things: a design that answers the landscape rather than importing one, patience with a demanding planning environment, and construction direction that does not depend on being local. ### The landscape sets the rules The best sites in Ibiza are protected, steep, exposed to wind and salt, and visible from far away. The architecture that lasts there works with those conditions — buildings set into the slope rather than on top of it, courtyards and deep thresholds that manage sun and wind, and a short list of materials that age well in salt air: stone, lime, concrete, timber used with judgement. Bunker House, the studio's current Ibiza project, develops as two staggered levels embedded in the hillside facing the sea, a section that gives every room the view while keeping the house low in the landscape. ### Planning takes the time it takes Licence processes in the Balearics are slower and more restrictive than in most of mainland Spain, and rural land carries its own regime. The honest answer is that timelines vary by municipality and by the specifics of each plot, and any fixed promise is a sales figure. The studio's approach is to verify what a plot allows before design begins, design inside those limits from day one, and build the licence period into the project schedule rather than discovering it later. ### Directing construction from Valencia Distance is a discipline, not an obstacle. The studio directs island construction through complete construction documents that leave little to interpretation, a fixed rhythm of site visits aligned with the construction schedule, and continuous coordination with local contractors and technical architects. The same model serves the studio's work in Madrid, Murcia and the Gulf — the building arrives as conceived because the documentation and the supervision are designed for distance from the start. ### What a client should ask first Before buying a plot in the Balearics, three questions matter more than any render: what the planning regime actually permits, what access and services will cost to establish, and how the sun and wind cross the site through the year. The studio carries out this verification as the first step of any island commission — it is cheaper to know before owning. --- ## Working in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf https://balzararchitects.com/studio/working-in-kuwait-and-the-gulf/ Balzar Architects works in the Gulf, with current projects in Kuwait and a large private house of around 5,000 m² in Saudi Arabia. Each project is designed and directed from Valencia and coordinated continuously with the local engineers, consultants and contractors on the ground — the model that lets a Valencia studio build reliably in the region. ### What the studio builds in the region Current work spans scales. Barzakh Tower in Kuwait City is a 42,000 m² commercial development of two office towers behind a monumental lattice facade that manages the Gulf sun. Round House in Messilah is a 3,000 m² private residence of three circular volumes clad in limestone. Bnaider Beach House sits on the Kuwaiti coast. In Saudi Arabia the studio is developing a large private house of around 5,000 m². Each project is designed and directed from Valencia. ### Designing for the climate, not against it The Gulf teaches an old lesson: the climate is answered with section and mass before it is answered with machinery. Deep thresholds, shaded courtyards, controlled openings and heavy materials — the vocabulary of the traditional Kuwaiti freej — remain the most reliable instruments for comfort in extreme heat. The studio's Gulf projects begin there, then apply contemporary engineering on top of a passive logic. Facades are designed for dust and glare as much as for composition. ### How authorship survives distance The risk of international work is dilution — a concept designed in Europe and rebuilt beyond recognition by delivery. The studio's answer is structural: complete and explicit construction documentation, a single design authority from concept through site queries, and local partners who share the standard rather than merely tolerating it. Drawings are treated as commitments, not suggestions. ### For clients in the region The studio works for private clients, families and developers in the Gulf, in English, with Spanish and Chinese also spoken in the team. First conversations usually happen over video with the site documentation on the table, followed by a visit. --- ## Frequently asked questions https://balzararchitects.com/studio/faq/ ### Does Balzar Architects work outside Spain? Yes. The studio is based in Valencia and builds internationally, with current projects in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, China and Spain, and completed or active work connected to Egypt and Bali. Its Saudi work includes a large private house of around 5,000 m². ### Does the studio take on renovations, or only new houses? Both. The archive includes apartment and penthouse renovations in Valencia — among them the 1928 Penthouse and GE Apartment — alongside new houses, offices and larger developments. The criterion is not scale but whether the studio's position can hold on the project. ### Is interior design included? Interior design is part of the studio's core work, not an add-on. Most projects are developed as complete environments: architecture, interiors, furniture selection and landscape inside one process. Interior-only commissions are also taken — several of the studio's built works are interiors. ### Who will actually design my house? The founding team directs every project. Txema García Ballester leads the architectural design of all studio work, with a named project leader carrying the day-to-day. The studio is structured so the intelligence that conceives a project is the one that details and supervises it. ### How long does a private house take? As orientation: twelve to eighteen months of design and permitting in Spain, then eighteen to thirty months of construction, depending on size, site and municipality. Licence periods vary widely — in the Balearics they run longer. Every proposal includes a project-specific schedule. ### Can the studio supervise construction far from Valencia? Yes — it is designed for that. Construction direction rests on complete documentation, a fixed rhythm of site visits and coordination with local contractors and technical architects. The studio currently directs work in Madrid, Ibiza, Murcia and Kuwait under this model. ### What does the studio need to prepare a proposal? Three things: the site (location and any documentation you have), the brief as you understand it today, and your intended timeline. With that, the studio prepares a written proposal with scope, phases, team and schedule. ### Does the studio work in English? Yes. The studio works daily in English and Spanish, and in Chinese for its projects and clients in China. ### What is the studio's architectural position? Form as construction, proportion and measure over novelty, light designed before surface, material honesty, and restraint as the result of removing everything that does not belong. The longer version is on the Studio page and in the Thinking section. ### Does the studio work for developers? Yes. Balzar Architects works for residential and hotel developers as well as for private clients. For a development, the studio applies the same author position at the scale of the scheme, treating the concept as a commercial asset that distinguishes the project in its market. ### Can the studio enter at concept stage only? Yes. The studio can take on a project for concept design alone — establishing the position, the massing and the section — and hand over a complete concept for others to develop, or continue through to construction. Each phase is closed and complete in itself. ### How does the studio protect cost certainty during construction? Through complete, coordinated documentation and closed phases. Decisions are taken at each phase gate and nothing is carried forward unresolved, so the project is fully described before construction begins and the price can be fixed and held. The same consulting engineers stay on the work, and the studio supervises construction as quality control. ### How are fees structured? Fees are structured by phase, in proportion to the scope of each stage, and agreed in writing in the initial proposal before any work begins. The studio does not quote a figure without understanding the site, the programme and the scale of the project. --- ## Working with developers: residential and hotel projects https://balzararchitects.com/studio/working-with-developers/ Balzar Architects works for developers as well as for private clients. For a residential development or a hotel, author architecture is not a risk to manage but a value to build: one design intelligence, applied from the first idea to the last construction detail, that the market can tell apart from generic product. ### The concept is the commercial asset A development is chosen on its identity before it is chosen on its floor area. The concept — how a building meets its site, how it is organised in section, how light and material are handled — is what sets one scheme apart from the many around it. The studio treats that concept as the developer's asset: a clear architectural position, held consistently across every unit, that gives the project a character the market recognises and a reason to be chosen. ### Closed phases that fix cost before construction The studio works in defined phases, with decisions taken at each phase gate and nothing carried forward unresolved. Concept design establishes the position; design development resolves it; construction documents describe it completely. Complete, coordinated documentation is what allows a price to be fixed before work begins and held through construction. The same consulting engineers for structure and services stay on the work, and the studio supervises construction as quality control. For a developer, this is cost certainty and product control, written into the process. ### Evidence, by typology and scale The studio's work for developers spans programme and scale: Alfinach, in Valencia, three industrialised houses delivered in 2025; Mirasal, in Torrevieja, a 7,214 m² triangular urban block; Barzakh, in Kuwait, 125,000 m² across two office towers; and Langzhong, in China, a mixed-use scheme on the edge of a historic old town. Each is directed by the studio's founders and carried by a named project leader from concept to site. ### Preparing a proposal To prepare a proposal for a development, the studio needs four things: the site, the programme, the intended timeline, and the product positioning — who the scheme is for and how it should be understood in its market. The studio replies with a written proposal setting out scope, phases, team and schedule. --- ## Building in Marbella, Benahavís and the Costa del Sol https://balzararchitects.com/studio/building-on-the-costa-del-sol/ The studio works on the Costa del Sol — Marbella, Benahavís and the hillsides above the coast. The approach there begins where most coastal building ends: with the site itself, its topography and its light, treated as the material of the architecture rather than a view to be framed and sold. ### Topography is the project The plots above Marbella and in Benahavís fall steeply toward the sea. That slope is not a constraint to be levelled; it is the section of the house. Working the ground — where the building cuts in, where it steps, where it holds the horizon and where it turns away from it — is the first design decision and the one that determines everything after it. The studio designs the section before the plan. ### Against generic coastal architecture Much of what is built on the coast is promotional: a style applied to a plot to move a sale. The studio works the other way. A house on the Costa del Sol is held to the same position as any other project — proportion and measure, light before surface, material honesty — so that it belongs to its place and its climate rather than to a market season. ### Materials that age by the sea Salt, sun and humidity are hard on buildings. Materials are chosen for how they behave over years in that climate, not for how they photograph on completion: stone, lime, timber and metals selected and detailed to weather well and to last. What ages honestly is what still looks considered a decade later. ### Working the coast from Valencia The studio runs its Costa del Sol work the way it runs its other projects away from Valencia: directed by the founders, carried by a named project leader, with regular presence on site and the same consulting engineers throughout. Distance is a matter of organisation, not of attention. --- ## Working on hotels and hospitality projects https://balzararchitects.com/studio/designing-hotels-and-hospitality/ Balzar Architects designs hotels and hospitality as author architecture: a building whose concept, section and material give it an identity guests remember and an operator can run. For a hotel, the design is not a finish applied to a room count. It is the reason a place is chosen over the many around it. ### The concept is the guest experience A hotel is chosen on the experience it offers before it is chosen on its rate. How the building meets its landscape, how it is organised in section, how light, threshold and material are handled: this is what a guest remembers and what a brand is built on. The studio treats that concept as the operator’s asset, held consistently from arrival to room, so the project reads as one place rather than an assembly of parts. ### Landscape and setting as the first material Sobre Bancales, a rural hotel set in the vineyards of Requena, works from a single premise: minimum impact on a landscape that already has its own coherence. The volume is partly sunken and aligned with the agricultural terraces around it, so the hotel is inhabited from the threshold between the room and the cultivated ground. The setting is not a backdrop to the building. It is the first material the design works with. ### Closed phases that fix cost before construction The studio works in defined phases, with decisions taken at each phase gate and nothing carried forward unresolved. Concept design establishes the position, design development resolves it, and construction documents describe it completely. Complete, coordinated documentation is what allows a price to be fixed before work begins and held through construction. For an operator or investor, this is cost certainty and product control written into the process. ### Preparing a proposal To prepare a proposal for a hotel or hospitality project, the studio needs four things: the site, the programme and its key count, the intended timeline, and the positioning, meaning who the hotel is for and how it should be understood in its market. The studio replies with a written proposal setting out scope, phases, team and schedule. --- ## Building in Madrid: La Moraleja and La Finca https://balzararchitects.com/studio/building-in-madrid/ The studio works in Madrid, in La Moraleja, La Finca and the consolidated private estates of the north of the city. Building there is governed less by a single plot than by the estate around it: its rules, its scale of house, and the standard its neighbours set. The studio's approach begins with reading that context precisely, before a line is drawn. ### The consolidated plot Unlike a virgin site, a plot in an established estate arrives with conditions: mature planting, existing levels, setbacks and covenants, and neighbours already built. These are not obstacles but the terms of the project. The design works with what the estate already is — its grain, its distances, its planted mass — so that a new house belongs to the place rather than announcing itself against it. ### Two houses in La Moraleja The studio has two houses under way in La Moraleja: one of around 1,100 m², in licensing and due to start on site shortly, and one of around 2,100 m², in construction. Each is directed by the founders and carried by a named project leader, on the Valencia–Madrid model the studio already runs. ### Running Madrid from Valencia Distance is a matter of organisation. The studio directs its Madrid work from Valencia with regular presence on site, the same consulting engineers for structure and services across the work, and a single point of responsibility for the client. The model is already operating; the two houses are built proof of it. ### What to ask before buying a plot Before a plot in La Moraleja or La Finca is bought, it is worth understanding what it will allow: the buildable envelope and setbacks, the estate's rules and approvals, the real levels and orientation, and the honest timeline once licensing is included. The studio advises on these before a purchase, so the site is chosen for what it can become. --- ## El Gouna House https://balzararchitects.com/work/el-gouna-house/ - Location: El Gouna, Egypt - Year: 2026 - Area: 1,800 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress A house on the Red Sea coast at El Gouna, conceived for a family that returns across the seasons and across generations. Not a holiday villa but a permanent setting: a building that holds the life of a family when it is present, and holds its own dignity when it is not. The site faces two opposite conditions — to the northeast the open sea and the long horizon, to the southwest a road and the low, dense fabric of the town — and the tension between the two responses is the foundation of the design. The house is built to be true to two states at once: full and empty, open and closed. ### Two opposite conditions. One answer The house has two faces because the site has two conditions. They are not front and back, but two different responses to two different realities, and the tension between them is the argument of the project. A closed face gives weight to an open one; an open face releases the pressure of the closed one. The line between them is the central axis. ### The closed face To the road, the house presents a continuous wall, forty-five metres long and two storeys high, with a single opening on the axis. It protects the interior from the afternoon sun, the dust and the noise, and it is the most worked surface in the project, not a back. Behind it the rooms turn inward, each opening onto a private patio rather than the street. The openness is generous, and the privacy is complete. ### A reference: Hassan Fathy The house descends from Hassan Fathy’s lesson at New Gourna in 1946 — that the intelligence of Egyptian building already lives in its response to climate: the mass wall, the courtyard, the deep threshold, and that the architect’s task is not to invent but to remember. Mud brick belongs to the Nile valley, not the Red Sea coast; here the same principles are carried in concrete block, stone and lime mortar. The primary instrument is the wall, not the machine. ### The open face To the sea, the same house opens completely. The threshold is a gradient, not a line: room, covered terrace, pool deck, sand, water. The relationship is set room by room — where the room is made for the horizon a full glazed wall dissolves into it; elsewhere the sea is held at a measured distance, or reduced to a precise vertical incision. ### One axis, two equal wings A single axis runs from the entrance on the southwest to the sea on the northeast, and the rooms distribute in mirror on either side: two wings of equal weight, equal programme, equal proportion. The helical stair holds the centre. The symmetry is structural, not decorative — a principle, not a style. ### The sea, framed many ways The relationship to the sea is not uniform. In the living room a full glazed wall frames the horizon at the height of a seated figure, so architecture and landscape compose into a single image. At the cinema the sea is rationed to a narrow vertical slit framed in dark mass. A fragment of horizon, precisely cut, communicates more than a panorama. ### The incision Where a room is not given the whole horizon, the house makes an incision. A single precise cut — narrow, vertical, deep — captures more of the landscape than an open glazed wall, because it fixes a point of view. It is a question of perspective: the cut decides where you stand and what you see, and turns a fragment of sea or sky into an event. It is an old instinct — the line scored across a desert to seize the whole plain, the wall slotted to hold the horizon. At the cinema the sea enters this way, rationed to a vertical sliver framed in dark mass. ### The colour is in the wall, not on it The closed wall is finished in hand-applied lime mortar, pigmented with iron oxide so the colour runs through the body of the material rather than over its surface. Its hand-scored vertical grooves drain the desert dust, water and salt, and register the sun across the day. The lime keeps hardening for decades. The wall is built to look better in forty years than on the day it is finished. ### One logic, two tonal families The interior is built in two tonal families, one darker and one lighter, and the same logic runs through both: travertine in chocolate and in Ocean Blue, lime in wet sand and dry sand, and linen in two colours. These are not two palettes but one, read at two depths. Outside, the house is monochrome, a single tone held from the entrance to the sea. ### The position The house takes a deliberate position. It is not a landmark, though it is built at a scale that would allow one, and it does not imitate the styles the resort has accumulated. It takes from Egypt what is fundamental — the mass wall, the courtyard, the response to the sun, the colour of the earth — as method rather than quotation. A serious house, built with care, for a family that will return. --- ## Mirasal Development https://balzararchitects.com/work/mirasal-development/ - Location: Torrevieja, Spain - Year: 2017 - Area: 7,214 m² - Programme: Masterplan - Status: Completed Torrevieja, south of Alicante, sits beside Las Lagunas de La Mata y Torrevieja, a coastal natural park of high ecological and landscape value where the salt lagoons hold a light pink hue. The plot is a complete triangular block in a recently built area with no neighbouring buildings yet, on a pronounced topography with distant views towards the park. Within this context, Balzar Architects and Julia Alcocer design the Mirasal residential complex: a set of white, horizontal volumes that turn the block inward, around a garden. ### Perimeter and garden The complex occupies the whole triangular block and conforms to its perimeter. The built volumes are placed along the edges, freeing a large garden at the interior. The block is organised inward: the shared, planted space becomes the centre of the project, set back from the streets around it. ### In step with the terrain The site falls across a pronounced slope. The building follows it, stepping with the natural levels of the ground rather than levelling them. The section takes up the change in height, and the limestone stairs and terraces that resolve it become part of the way the complex is crossed. ### A single white volume From the outside, the complex resolves into white horizontal masses. Deep cantilevers and long, low openings give the volumes their weight and their plasticity; the white render, read against the pale sky and the limestone base, keeps the whole abstract. The architecture is composed to be read as one thing, not as an assembly of parts. ### Interior and light Inside, the same restraint continues. White walls and pale stone floors carry the light into the rooms, and sheer curtains soften it along the openings. The furnishing is warm and spare: rattan, jute, wood and ceramic set against the white, so that the material weight sits in the objects and the light rather than in the architecture. --- ## Murcia Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/murcia-apartment/ - Location: Murcia, Spain - Year: 2013 - Area: 60 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed A first-floor apartment in a nineteen-sixties rationalist building is reorganised as a single continuous space. The existing partition walls are removed and the programme is held in place only by pivoting and sliding panels and by built-in furniture, which also corrects the irregular geometry of the original plan. A reduced palette holds it together: dark smoked oak underfoot, white painted walls and white lacquered joinery above. At dusk, the artificial light turns those white planes gold. ### A single room, organised by furniture The building sits on a central commercial street of Murcia. With the masonry partitions gone, programme is drawn instead by the careful placement of pivoting panels, cabinets and furniture against the existing structure. The plan reads as one continuous space, divided only when use requires it. ### Furniture as construction Every element is integrated into a single composition: installations, the existing structure, artificial light, the fitted furniture, the doors. Nothing is added as a finish; everything is part of the same construction. The cabinets correct the irregular geometry inherited from the old layout, regularising the perimeter of each room and absorbing the depth needed for storage. What reads as a clean wall is, in most cases, a piece of joinery doing the work that a partition used to do. ### Dark floor, white planes, gold at dusk The smoked oak floor sets the contrast that holds the apartment together. Against it, the white painted walls and the white lacquered joinery read as a single bright plane. The palette is reduced on purpose: two values, one warm wood. At dusk the artificial light tints those white planes gold and the room reveals a second character, quieter and warmer than the daylit one. --- ## Cointec Office https://balzararchitects.com/work/cointec-office/ - Location: Orihuela, Spain - Year: 2016 - Area: 260 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The space sits below road level, facing a park in Orihuela. It arrived raw: a concrete shell with a steel mezzanine structure already in place, located within a flood zone. Both conditions, the depressed entry and the water risk, were not obstacles to work around. They became the first design decisions. ### Concrete, continuous, across every room An elevated platform at the entrance resolves the flood exposure and establishes a raised datum from which the rest of the plan is organised. This threshold is marked by a stone bench, the only material element in the project that contrasts with the floor. Everything else is consistent: concrete throughout, unjointed, running from the entrance platform across every zone of the office. The floor is the project’s primary organisational element. Its continuity produces the sense of spatial unity that the open plan requires; the single material change at the entry threshold marks the transition from street to workspace with economy and precision. ### Organisation without walls The layout organises the 260 square metres as a single continuous space. Compartmentalisation comes not from fixed walls but from the precise positioning of furniture and glass partitions, satin stainless steel frames that divide zones while maintaining visual connection across the whole. The staircase and washrooms are consolidated at the rear of the plan, releasing the entire front area as uninterrupted working floor with direct views onto the park. A central storage band running the length of the space resolves the ventilation and technical runs within its depth, keeping the ceiling free. ### Austerity as position The project was completed in 2016, at the tail end of a period when the constraints on architectural practice in Spain were severe. The Cointec offices work from those constraints directly: a raw space, a limited budget, a programme that demands clarity above all else. The expressiveness of the space comes from proportion, material and light, not from addition or decoration. The park view, framed by the low position of the windows, is the dominant spatial experience. The architecture does not compete with it. --- ## Jingshan Pagoda https://balzararchitects.com/work/jingshan-pagoda/ - Location: Jingshan, China - Area: 14 m² - Programme: Cultural - Status: In progress The municipality of Jingshan, in the tea country of Hangzhou, set out to mark fifteen points along a cultivation landscape with fifteen small buildings — a route that lets the territory be read without interrupting it. The studio was asked to design one. The question the commission poses is old and exact: how to build in a landscape without diminishing it, how to give orientation without imposing. The answer is a single stepped volume in terracotta, drawn from the colour of the ground, standing among the tea fields as both a figure and a threshold. ### One of fifteen, on a tea route The pavilion is conceived not as an object placed on the land but as a point of orientation within it: a place to stop, to look, to understand where one stands in the fields. It belongs to the route as much as to its own site. ### A stepped profile against the fields The pavilion is built from stacked horizontal layers, a stepped profile that rises from a low base to a crowned top. The form is read in section: each layer steps in or out from the one below, so the silhouette changes continuously as one moves around it and through the fields. A single portal is cut through the volume, framing a view of the landscape beyond and drawing the route through the structure rather than around it. ### Terracotta, ground, horizon The pavilion is finished in a warm terracotta tone, drawn from the earth of the tea terraces and set against the green of the fields. The colour holds the structure in its landscape: present, but continuous with the ground it stands on. From a distance it reads as a single mark on the horizon; up close, the stepped layers and the cut portal give it the scale of a room. The pavilion offers what the brief asked for — orientation without imposition, a threshold between the visitor and the territory. --- ## Bunker House https://balzararchitects.com/work/bunker-house/ - Location: Cala Tarida, Ibiza - Area: 500 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress The plot slopes toward the sea. The house follows it. Two staggered levels step down the terrain, each one oriented toward Cala Tarida across the western coast of the island. The site is surrounded by pine-covered terrain and rocky shoreline; the afternoon light comes in low from the west, directly over the water. ### The section follows the slope The section is the project. The shift between the two levels resolves the topography, distributes the programme, and places the main living spaces at the precise elevation where the view is unobstructed and the afternoon light enters at a low angle across the interior surfaces. The mass of the building sits to the landward side. The seaward facade opens fully through large-format glazing that frames the cove and the water below. The solid and the open are distributed according to orientation, not symmetry: heavy where the site demands enclosure, transparent where it offers prospect. ### Form within constraint The geometry of the house responds directly to the regulatory envelope of the plot. Within those constraints, the volume is refined to the point where form and programme are the same thing, nothing remains that does not also perform. The staggered section, the position of the openings, the depth of the overhangs: each decision resolves multiple conditions simultaneously. The deep porches and covered terraces that result from this section logic are not additions to the programme, they are the programme’s natural extension into the landscape. They provide shade in the hottest months while maintaining the visual and spatial connection to the exterior throughout the year. ### Material and climate The material palette is controlled and consistent with the landscape: warm, earthy tones on exterior surfaces that absorb the Ibiza light without reflecting it. Natural ventilation is achieved through the section rather than mechanical means, the shift between levels and the position of openings creates a thermal gradient that moves air through the house. Interior finishes do not compete with the light and the view. The rooms are designed to receive the landscape, not to assert themselves against it. The house is embedded in its site. It does not announce itself. --- ## La Pedrera House https://balzararchitects.com/work/la-pedrera-house/ - Location: Dénia, Spain - Area: 205 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress The plot falls steeply toward an abandoned quarry at its lower edge. The house does not sit above this landscape, it enters it. From the street, the architecture barely registers. Two lateral volumes flank a raised entry platform. The descent begins here: a sequence that leads downward, below the access level, to where the programme unfolds. The house is not visible until you are already inside it. ### Autonomy within context The surrounding neighbourhood is built without compositional coherence, single-family houses of different periods and typologies, implanted on the hillside without a common language. The project responds with a single, autonomous piece: contained, serene, oriented entirely toward the landscape it has chosen to inhabit rather than toward the street it faces. From outside, at the level of access, the house presents almost nothing. Two volumes, a platform, a threshold. The full spatial experience is reserved for the interior. ### The quarry as material reference The abandoned quarry at the foot of the site is not directly visible from within the house, the topography prevents it. But its presence runs through every material decision: the rough mineral texture of the exterior surfaces, the density of the enclosing walls, the logic of a building that does not stand above its terrain but occupies it from within. The quarry’s cuts in the rock, stratified, geological, made by extraction rather than by design, are the reference for the house’s own openings: not punctuations on a vertical plane, but excavations in a solid mass. ### Light through cuts, not windows The entire plan is organised on a single lower level. Light enters through deep cuts in the ceiling mass and excavated interior patios rather than through conventional openings on a vertical facade. The section controls the quality of that light, its direction, its duration, its angle at different moments of the day, more precisely than any window could. The result is a house of controlled shadow and precise illumination. The relationship between a space and its light is not ambient but specific: each room receives the light its function requires. --- ## Moraleja CN6 House https://balzararchitects.com/work/moraleja-cn6-house/ - Location: La Moraleja, Madrid - Area: 2,100 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress The plot is in La Moraleja, north of Madrid. It descends: from the street-level access, an undulating terrain of mature oak trees falls away toward the southern boundary. The project works directly from this topography. The house enters at the top of the slope, where only a single storey registers against the road, and extends downward through two main levels as the ground falls beneath it. ### One storey visible from the street The entry sequence begins at the highest point of the plot: a garden, a path, a plaza that functions as an arrival threshold before the house proper. From here, one volume is visible against the sky. The full extent of the project, its section, its scale, its relationship to the landscape, is only understood from within. The programme unfolds below: descending with the land rather than sitting above it. The lower level accommodates parking, an indoor pool, and service areas in a semi-buried condition, with views, natural light, and ventilation despite their position. The roof of this level is planted, reading as ground from the living areas above. ### Section as the primary decision The day spaces occupy the intermediate level, principal rooms oriented toward the south, where the oak canopy is densest and most continuous. The section is calibrated precisely: the house is most open where the landscape is most generous, and most contained where the street boundary is nearest. This calibration produces a building that behaves differently depending on your position relative to it. From the street, it is discreet to the point of near-invisibility. From the garden level, it opens fully. From within, it is present and spatially generous across every level. ### Oak canopy as climate and light The mature oak trees of La Moraleja, some of them decades old, are the dominant spatial presence of the development. Rather than treating them as obstacles or incidental features, the project positions the main glazed facades directly beneath the canopy, so that the tree cover filters the southern light before it enters the rooms. The result is an interior light quality that changes continuously through the seasons: the canopy is dense in summer, filtering and cooling; sparse in winter, allowing low sun to penetrate deep into the plan. The trees do the work that mechanical systems would otherwise perform. ### From outside, barely a building From the street the house is discreet to the point of near-invisibility. From within, it belongs entirely to its landscape. The architecture is the negotiation between those two readings: one storey to the road, three storeys to the garden, with the planted roof of the lower level rejoining the slope as if the house had only borrowed the ground. ### The first works on site After the design phase, the project has moved to the ground. The initial works clear and shape the sloping plot, following the natural descent of the terrain rather than levelling it. Excavation begins for the semi-buried lower level, cut into the slope so that its planted roof will later read as ground from the rooms above. The mature oaks of La Moraleja are retained throughout: the machinery works around the canopy, and the setting-out of the house is calibrated to the trees it will sit beneath. What the renders proposed as section and landscape is now being carved into the site itself. --- ## Moraleja CH40 House https://balzararchitects.com/work/moraleja-ch40-house/ - Location: La Moraleja, Madrid - Area: 1,200 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress The plot in La Moraleja arrives already complete: a dense stand of mature trees that the house is built to serve rather than to displace. The architecture begins by withdrawing. Pale, continuous surfaces within are calibrated to recede before the light the trees let fall. ### Form from constraint The shape of the house is not invented; it is derived. The building regulations of La Moraleja — their setbacks, heights and limits — are worked until they yield a single low volume set transverse to the plot. Rather than close that volume, the project cuts a deep opening through its centre: a recessed threshold that crosses the full depth of the house and frames the garden to the south. The entrance is read through this void before the house is entered. The solid masses to either side hold the private rooms; the opening between them holds the shared life of the house and its relation to the trees. ### Living in the opening The principal space occupies the centre of the house, set a little below the entrance and open on both faces to the garden. A single curved stair turns within it, the one free gesture in an otherwise orthogonal plan, present as a form to move around more than a route to climb. Travertine, lime render and pale timber hold the interior in one quiet register. Nothing on the surfaces asks to be looked at, so the gaze passes through the house, from one garden to the other, without resistance. ### The landscape, first The orientation of the house is decided by the vegetation. The principal glazing faces south into the densest part of the canopy, and the foliage filters the light before it reaches the rooms, changing its quality through the day and the year. The trees do the work a screen or a system would otherwise perform. Bedrooms and service spaces are held within the solid flanks; the living spaces, the stair and the pool are given to the green. The house is built so that the landscape, and not the architecture, is the first and the last thing seen from within. --- ## Orihuela Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/orihuela-apartment/ - Location: Orihuela, Spain - Year: 2019 - Area: 130 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The apartment occupies the top floor of a nineteen-sixties rationalist block in central Orihuela. Three bedrooms recede onto the side facades while the public room takes the whole front, opening onto the Glorieta and the Callosa and Orihuela ranges beyond. A single longitudinal piece organises the centre of that room, holding the kitchen on one side and a long dining table on the other, never closing the space. Pale oak floor, white walls, a dark counter set against them: the apartment is held by very few materials, allowed the time to be made well. ### One piece for the centre of the room The shape of the public room is markedly longitudinal, almost a corridor of light, and the plan reinforces that proportion rather than disguising it. A single fitted element runs along the longitudinal axis and absorbs the activities of the main space. It contains the kitchen on one side and extends as a dining table on the other, cantilevering over the floor with the floor visible beneath. It is a piece of furniture, but it works as a partition between zones without ever closing the room. The eye reads the apartment as continuous; the body finds two distinct places to stand, on either side of the same object. ### Time and a small group of people Two ingredients carried this project: time, and a small group of people working on it together. Time was the condition for refining the joints, for letting the section settle, for making sure that what looks effortless required the effort it deserved. The team did the rest. The architects’ work, in the end, was the thread that strings the pearls. --- ## GVFC Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/gvfc-apartment/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2018 - Area: 130 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The building was designed by Antonio Escario. It occupies a corner position on one of Valencia’s main avenues, and the apartment follows the chamfered geometry of the block, a plan of oblique angles where no wall runs parallel to another. This is not an incidental condition. It is the defining spatial characteristic of the apartment, and it becomes the generative logic of the renovation. ### One curved plane, three resolutions The living room contains the project’s most complex move. A curved ceiling plane spans between the kitchen side and the study at the former balcony, performing three simultaneous functions: it separates the dining zone from the sitting area, it absorbs a structural beam that crosses the space, and it connects the joinery elements on either side into one continuous composition. The curve is not formal. It is a resolution, the single gesture that holds together conditions that would otherwise require three separate interventions. ### Fixed furniture as spatial structure Fixed joinery elements trace the room perimeters throughout the apartment, absorbing structural columns and service runs into continuous surfaces that read as single elements regardless of the angle from which they are seen. The irregular geometry of the plan, walls that meet at unexpected angles, corners that are not right angles, is regularised by these joinery surfaces without being concealed. The result is a plan that reads as composed rather than awkward. The chamfer of the building, which could have been a liability, becomes the apartment’s most distinctive spatial quality. ### Material register The material language is reduced and consistent throughout: pale tones, joinery surfaces conceived as abstract volumes rather than decorated furniture. Nothing in the palette draws attention to itself; the spatial complexity of the plan is given room to be perceived without competition from surface pattern or chromatic variation. The Escario building, its corner position, its proportions, its relationship to the avenue, remains the dominant reference. The renovation does not attempt to supersede it. It works within it, using its own geometry as the raw material. Lighting by Viabizzuno; furniture by Agrippa and Andreu World. --- ## Calma House https://balzararchitects.com/work/calma-house/ - Location: El Campello, Spain - Area: 1,881 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress The plot is flat, large, and irregular in geometry, its boundary follows no orthogonal logic. Rather than treating this irregularity as a problem, the project takes it as the generative condition. A triangular module, derived from the residual angle between building mass and plot perimeter, becomes the organising element of the entire composition: repeated, scaled, rotated, it appears in the garden, the terrace geometry, the paving, the pavilion structure. ### One module, repeated at every scale The main volume is oriented southeast, opening fully toward the pool and the sea beyond. This orientation determines the position of every principal room, every threshold, every view corridor. Curved edges along the building perimeter, derived from the same triangular logic, mediate the transition between interior and exterior, softening the meeting between built mass and planted ground. The module is the plan’s generating geometry, present at the scale of the site arrangement, of individual rooms, and of paving and detail; the project reads as unified because one geometric rule operates across every scale. ### A sequence of outdoor rooms The covered entrance porch marks the threshold between public and private. From here, movement through the house unfolds naturally: the ground floor connects interior and exterior at every point along the southeast face. The garden develops as a sequence of distinct outdoor conditions rather than a single undifferentiated space: open lawn gives way to a shaded pergola, then to a sunken terrace, then to the pool that extends toward the property boundary. Each of these outdoor zones has a different spatial character, exposed or sheltered, open or enclosed, for movement or for rest. The triangular module gives them formal coherence while allowing each its own atmosphere. ### Vegetation and structure The secondary pavilion sits within the garden, set at the residual angle between the main house and the perimeter. Its roof is defined by climbing vegetation, a structure for plants as much as for people. It is a room without walls: a place for meals outside, for play, for shade during the hottest hours. Existing pines and palms across the plot are retained throughout. They are not incidental to the composition, they are part of it. The pavilion position, the pool axis, the pergola orientation: each is calibrated against the existing tree canopy. The vegetation is prior to the architecture. The architecture acknowledges this. --- ## AO17 Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/ao17-apartment/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2021 - Area: 250 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The building is in Ciutat Vella, adjacent to the Mercat Central. Its facades are protected; the interior arrived with original ceiling mouldings, corbelled corridors, and the proportional logic of pre-war Valencia domestic architecture, ceiling heights that contemporary construction no longer produces, room dimensions that reflect a different understanding of domestic scale. ### One continuous profile through every room White lacquered wood panelling runs across the main wall surfaces, developed from the logic of the ornamental wardrobes that had originally organised the rooms. The panelling performs three functions simultaneously: it regularises the wall surfaces where the original plaster was uneven, incorporates storage within its depth, and improves thermal and acoustic performance. It is not decoration. It is the building’s new interior structure. A continuous moulding and skirting profile connects every element in sequence, fitted doors, kitchen joinery, wardrobes, marble bathroom cladding, into a single unbroken line that runs through the apartment. The profile is the thread that makes the apartment read as one composition rather than a series of separate rooms. ### The entrance sequence The ceiling of the domed corridor at the entrance retains its original mouldings, preserved rather than removed, because their corbelled geometry was integral to the spatial character of the arrival sequence. The decision to use a vaulted form in the corridor rather than a flat ceiling avoids demolishing the moulded brackets while reinforcing the decorative impact of the threshold. In the dining room, a curved ceiling plane echoes this corridor geometry, establishing visual continuity between the entrance and the main living space. The curve here is not decorative repetition, it performs the same spatial role as the dome at the entry: it marks a zone, defines a character, and maintains the compositional thread. ### Palette from white to copper The day zone, kitchen, dining room, living room, is a single continuous space, divided only by the positioning of furniture and the kitchen island that doubles as the dining table. The master bedroom, bathroom and dressing room are at the far end; the bathroom in natural black marble connects to the bedroom through large sliding panels. The material palette moves from white through cream to warm brown, with occasional copper, in the chimney interior, in recessed joinery cavities, that catches the light from the Mercat Central side without asserting itself. The warm tones accumulate gradually from the entrance to the private end of the apartment: the progression is spatial as much as material. --- ## Artes Gráficas Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/artes-graficas-apartment/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2021 - Area: 200 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The apartment was a vacant office on Avenida de Artes Gráficas, in the university district of Valencia. The conversion is for a young family — the plan reconfigured entirely from scratch, the programme organised around the demands of domestic life: rest, meals, work, play, storage. The building is rationalist; its structural logic is expressed rather than concealed. ### A storage band running the full length The primary spatial decision is a continuous storage band that runs the full length of the apartment along its interior wall. This band absorbs the existing structural elements and service runs within its depth, eliminating exposed columns and ceiling-mounted ducts. It defines the boundary of each room without fixed partitions: the rooms are what remains between the band and the exterior facades. The ceilings are designed on the same principle — integrating the building’s structural beams and mechanical systems into composed volumes that divide the space visually while keeping the plan continuous and open. The curved ceiling in the dining room gives that room its own spatial identity within the open layout: it is the heart of the apartment, distinguished from the adjacent zones by geometry rather than by wall. ### The Barberá facade as spatial reference The living room faces the Faculty of Philosophy, designed by Fernando Moreno Barberá. Its concrete brise-soleil facade — a strong, insistent vertical rhythm of light and shadow — is the dominant view from the apartment’s principal space. The material choices inside acknowledge this proximity: fossil limestone from the Alicante region clads the living room wall, carrying a geological texture that reads across the street against the Barberá facade’s aggregate concrete. Two different material logics, two different eras, in direct and considered dialogue. The plan separates day and night along a north-south axis. The living and dining areas face north toward the Barberá building; the bedrooms are to the south, opening onto a rear courtyard that brings natural light and vegetation into the quieter part of the plan. ### Five stones, one floor, one logic Five natural stones are used across the apartment, each assigned to a specific location and use: Indian granite in the kitchen, Carrara marble in the guest bathroom, Marquina black in the master suite, Ibiza white marble in the courtyard bench and planter, Alicante fossil limestone on the living room wall. Each stone is chosen for its specific material character in its specific context — not as a palette applied uniformly but as a series of precise material decisions. French oak flooring in 4-metre boards, 30 centimetres wide, runs throughout. The bespoke furniture — an American ash dining table, a bed built from the same floor boards — extends this material logic from the architecture into the objects. Alongside them: 1984 LC1 chairs in pony skin, an Eames elliptical table, rattan chairs by Oscar Tusquets. The apartment is furnished as it is built: each element chosen with the same criteria, at the same level of attention. --- ## Alfinach Development https://balzararchitects.com/work/alfinach-development/ - Location: Puzol, Spain - Year: 2025 - Area: 600 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: Completed Three single-family houses on one plot in Puzol, Valencia, designed as one architectural system. The plot carries exposed rocky outcrops and native Mediterranean vegetation; the project takes the site as it found it. The ensemble reads as a composition rather than a repetition: three objects sharing a common language, a common section, a common constructive logic. From the street, the development presents itself as a single piece; the individual units are legible only at close range. ### Site as starting point The existing geology informs the position of each volume, the orientation of each opening, the relationship between built and unbuilt ground. The project does not erase this condition. It works from it. ### Three houses, one constructive logic Architecture, structure and construction were developed simultaneously. This is not a formal project executed through standard means: the industrialised methods are design decisions, not post-completion cost savings. Three houses share the same load-bearing system, the same service distribution, the same roof section, the same envelope strategy. This is what makes the development read as one piece on the ground, even though it is composed of three separate houses. ### Proportion and continuity as tools Rather than treating industrialisation as repetition, the project uses it to achieve precision and continuity. The three dwellings share proportional dimensions: same ceiling heights, same window scales, same detail depths. Curved edges along the building perimeter, derived from the same triangular logic, soften the meeting between built mass and planted ground. ### Interior order Interior spaces are ordered and spare. Light enters at consistent angles across all three units; materials are continuous, the same palette inside and out. Fixed joinery absorbs separation, storage and lighting, so the open plan reads as a single space without relying on walls. Each house is inhabited as a version of the same architectural sentence: same language, same section, same response to the site. --- ## Barzakh Tower https://balzararchitects.com/work/barzakh-tower/ - Location: Kuwait City, Kuwait - Area: 42,000 m² - Programme: Commercial - Status: In progress Barzakh is an Arabic word for the interval between two states, the threshold that is neither one nor the other yet holds a character of its own. Two office towers in Kuwait, joined by a shared plinth and developed with Alhumaidhi Architects, take the word as their subject. A single stone lattice rises across both towers, binding 42,000 m² of programme into one vertical order; at the ground it deepens into a colonnade, and the plinth between the towers becomes a public threshold between the city and the building. The project is not named after an idea it illustrates. It is built as the thing the word describes: a passage held open between two conditions. ### Two towers, one lattice The two towers are conceived as a single architectural body. A stone lattice of vertical members runs across both facades, continuous from base to top, giving the towers a shared measure and a common rhythm. The lattice is structural and climatic as much as formal: it orders the floors behind it, modulates the Gulf sun across the glazed surface, and resolves the scale of a very large building into a repeated vertical element that can be read at the scale of the street. ### The threshold at the base At ground level the lattice deepens into a colonnade. The vertical members thicken into piers, and the facade becomes a portico of deep shadow before the building proper begins. The plinth that connects the two towers is the threshold the project is named for: a shared public level between the city and the offices above, neither fully exterior nor fully interior. Movement into the building passes through this in-between condition rather than across a single line. ### Stone, light, the city beyond The material is a warm stone, carried from the exterior lattice into the principal interiors. Within, the vertical members frame full-height glazing and the panoramic view across Kuwait; the rhythm of the facade becomes the rhythm of the rooms. Timber linings and a restrained palette hold the interior quiet, so the light filtered through the lattice and the city beyond remain the dominant presence. The building is a threshold in use as much as in name: a measured passage between the scale of the city and the scale of the room. --- ## 1928 Penthouse https://balzararchitects.com/work/1928-penthouse/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2022 - Area: 475 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The building was completed in 1928. Its facades are organised around a vertical rhythm of elongated windows, rounded arches and classical balustrades, the ornamental grammar of Valencia’s early-century bourgeois architecture. The renovation begins here, not inside: before any interior decision, the proportional logic of the existing building establishes the register within which every new element must operate. The apartment occupies two levels connected by a curved staircase. The lower floor, more open in character, accommodates a large multifunctional space oriented toward work and reception. The upper level is private, its extensive terrace and pool forming the centre of daily life outdoors. ### Two levels. One proportional register The intervention does not attempt to recreate the past. New elements, clean-lined joinery, contemporary furniture, a precisely considered lighting scheme, are introduced at a register that acknowledges the existing architecture without mimicking it. The relationship between periods is spatial and proportional, not decorative. The ceiling heights of the original rooms, the dimensions of the window openings, the depth of the balcony reveals: these measurements govern every new decision. A contemporary detail that ignores these proportions would read as an intrusion; one calibrated to them becomes part of the building’s logic. ### Material and atmosphere Material tones are pale and warm throughout: stone, plaster, light timber on walls and floors. Furniture pieces in darker hues, selected with the owners, who are attentive to design, anchor each room without competing with the ceiling heights or the light entering from the balconies. The master suite on the upper level maintains the same material continuity as the floors below. The terrace, open to the Valencia sky, extends the spatial sequence outward: the pool is set against the parapet, with the city’s roofline as its backdrop. ### Light as an organisational layer Lighting is treated as a spatial layer rather than a functional provision. Sources are concealed or indirect throughout; intensity varies by zone, creating distinct shifts between the more public character of the lower floor and the more intimate conditions of the private level above. The stained glass of the building’s original openings filters exterior light into the apartment at particular hours of the day, casting tones that shift from pale morning to warm afternoon. The artificial lighting scheme is designed to extend and complement this quality rather than replace it. --- ## Langzhong https://balzararchitects.com/work/langzhong/ - Location: Langzhong, China - Area: 4,047 m² - Programme: Mixed Use - Status: In progress The project stands at the edge of Langzhong’s ancient town, within a territory shaped by water, history and urban continuity. It is neither fully inside the protected historic fabric nor detached from it. It occupies a threshold condition. ### From public street to private interior The programme is organised as a gradual transition from public to private. Along the main pedestrian street, where the urban activity is most intense, the restaurant and principal access establish the building’s public face. Here, the project opens to the city. Further inside, the intensity changes. Tea rooms, spa and gathering spaces form an intermediate layer, neither fully public nor domestic. Beyond this condition, the private houses are placed deeper within the plot, protected by courtyards, gardens and planted filters. Privacy is not produced by separation alone, but by sequence, distance and light. ### Symmetry, module, construction The project approaches traditional Chinese architecture as a spatial system rather than an image. From it, the design takes symmetry as an ordering structure, modular repetition as a constructive measure, and the courtyard as a device for privacy and transition. The module organises rooms, dining areas, structure and services. Repeated elements establish a clear rhythm in plan and facade, while singular spaces appear at corners and moments of transition. This allows the building to remain legible as one architectural body despite the complexity of its programme: restaurant, hospitality, semi-public spaces and three private houses. Technical bands concentrate services, protect the main rooms from the street and separate the different fields of use. Construction becomes a way of ordering interior life. ### Stone, wood, light The materiality of the project begins with a local reference: the grooved stone of Langzhong. On the exterior, this condition is reinterpreted through finely carved stone surfaces that establish continuity with local tradition without copying it literally. Inside, the same logic is transferred to wood. The lines of the stone become profiles, screens and linings that introduce depth, shadow and a more domestic scale. The relationship between both materials creates continuity between exterior and interior while changing the temperature of the space. --- ## Balzar Studio https://balzararchitects.com/work/balzar-studio/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2022 - Area: 250 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The studio is on the ground floor of an Ensanche building on Joaquín Costa street in Valencia. The space opens at the rear onto an interior courtyard — vegetation, diffused light from a secondary orientation, a quality of stillness distinct from the street. This courtyard is the spatial event of the project. The work floor is positioned to receive that light from behind: even, without direct solar incidence, consistent throughout the day. ### A single open room, organised without hierarchy The plan is entirely open. No permanent partition divides the work area from the meeting zones; a full-height bookshelf and movable curtains articulate the space without enclosing it. The logic is one of a single room that accommodates different concentrations of work simultaneously — individual focus, collaborative work, client meetings, informal exchange — without assigning fixed territory to any of them. This is not an open-plan office in the conventional sense. The absence of hierarchy is a spatial decision as much as a cultural one: the organisation of the studio is legible in the organisation of its space. ### Steel, concrete, Iroko The material decisions are direct and without ambiguity. Steel — dark, raw, expressed — defines all fixed furniture elements. The floor is polished concrete. The kitchen island is natural granite in grey tones. The custom wood furniture is Iroko, warm and reddish against the darker surfaces. The palette is spare and entirely consistent: no decorative layer is applied over the structural one. The materials are the same materials the studio specifies for its clients — used here at a domestic scale, in a space that is also a working demonstration of the practice’s criteria. ### The reception as threshold The reception area holds several mid-century pieces — Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mackintosh’s Hill House Chair — alongside the studio’s own custom-designed work and meeting tables. These pieces belong to another era; they read as such, and the contrast with the raw steel and concrete is deliberate. They are not decorative objects. They are a position: architecture and design of lasting quality coexist regardless of period. Office furniture by Viccarbe, Knoll, Vitra and Cassina. The studio is what Balzar builds for others: ordered, material, open to modification. --- ## Expormim Office https://balzararchitects.com/work/expormim-office/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2025 - Area: 240 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed Expormim makes furniture from rattan. The brief for their Valencia offices was not to display the catalogue, but to translate the logic behind it — material honesty, craft precision, restraint — into the conditions of a workplace. The space had to embody the same values as the objects it contains without becoming a showroom in the conventional sense. ### Office, showroom, studio — without separation The space operates as three things at once: office, showroom, and studio. These modes are not separated by partition or threshold. Movement between them is absorbed into the organisation of the plan — furniture placement, surface continuity, and the presence of the terrace as an extension of both the work and the product. The 180 square metres of interior open onto 60 of covered outdoor space, where the brand’s exterior collection can be experienced in full Mediterranean light. The terrace is not a supplement to the office — it is part of it. ### Material behaviour under natural light The material palette is consistent with Expormim’s own language: rattan, travertine, lime plaster, natural linen. These are not decorative choices — they are the same choices the brand makes in its furniture, applied here at the scale of a room. Surfaces are chosen for how they behave under the light that enters through the terrace windows at different hours of the day, not for how they read in controlled conditions. The wood grain is legible in afternoon light. The travertine changes depth from morning to evening. The lime plaster holds shadow in its texture. The room performs differently across the day because the materials it is made of respond differently to the same light. ### The product within the space A selection of emblematic rattan pieces anchors each zone — designs by Miquel Milá, Oscar Tusquets and Norm Architects. The workplace is built around them rather than in spite of them. The furniture is not staged; it is in use. Meetings happen at the same tables that appear in the catalogue. The daily life of the office is inseparable from the product it represents. Lighting by Santa & Cole. Artwork by Yoyo Balagué. --- ## Los Olivos House https://balzararchitects.com/work/los-olivos-house/ - Location: Quesa, Spain - Year: 2023 - Area: 350 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: Completed The plot sits at the edge of Quesa, a small town in the interior of Valencia province. Beyond the boundary, an olive grove extends across the terrain. The house is organised around this grove — not as a view to be captured, but as the material from which the project is made. ### Four elements in section The plan is single-storey and develops along a longitudinal axis aligned to the south. Four spatial elements define the section and the relationship to the outside. A deep verandah runs the full length of the south facade, protecting the main rooms from the western sun and establishing the primary transition between inside and outside. Three courtyards — each with a different character — bring the grove and the sky into the bedroom wing, where privacy demands a more enclosed condition. A continuous glass opening, 18 metres long, faces the grove from the day space; the steel frame structure makes this span possible without intermediate support. A pool platform extends outward from the verandah into the trees, following the longitudinal axis of the house into the landscape. The structure is galvanised steel, working on a light-frame logic that allows both the long clear spans and rapid, precise construction. The building fulfils Passive House standards — insulation, thermal mass, controlled ventilation — achieved through the building envelope rather than mechanical compensation. The material palette is grounded in the landscape’s own tones: terracotta on floors and facade surfaces, olive green joinery, Iranian travertine and brass in the wet areas. The grove is everywhere — in the shadows it casts through the glass, in the colours of the walls, in the fact that the outdoor pool extends into its canopy. --- ## Round House https://balzararchitects.com/work/round-house/ - Location: Messilah, Kuwait - Area: 3,000 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress In the Gulf, the house has always turned inward. Round House takes that inheritance and gives it a geometry. Three circular volumes stand on a plot in the north of Messilah, set around a protected garden: the curved walls present a closed, continuous face to the three streets that border the site, and open, to the south, onto the largest expanse of vegetation and the sea beyond. The number three orders the house. The programme is gathered into groups of three and the mass resolved as three drums, so that a large residence reads as a single legible figure. The walls are limestone, carried unbroken around the curve. The architecture withdraws to the perimeter and gives its centre to the garden. ### Three volumes, three programmes, one courtyard The plot is in Messilah, on the coast east of Kuwait City. It is flat, open on three sides to the street, with sea views from the upper level to the east. There is no topography to respond to, no existing vegetation, no natural enclosure. The house provides all of this for itself. Three circular volumes are arranged around a central courtyard garden. The volumes touch at their perimeters, connecting at threshold points that become the transitions between one zone of the house and the next. ### Programme across the volumes Each circular volume contains a distinct cluster of programme. The family living spaces — kitchen, dining, informal reception — occupy the central and south volumes, opening directly onto the courtyard through large openings that dissolve the boundary between interior and garden. The formal reception and office occupy the east volume, with its own garden zone and separate entry for guests. The bedroom wing is organised vertically: the ground floor holds a guest suite; the upper floor distributes three suite clusters — master, son, daughters — each an independent circular unit with its own terrace and garden. The basement inverts the logic of the floors above. Here the curved walls give way to orthogonal geometry: the programme is service-oriented — gym, sauna, staff quarters, laundry, machine room, speakeasy — and the construction is straightforward. The formal complexity of the floors above is earned by the efficiency of the floor below. ### Curved surfaces and controlled light The interior language is consistent across every level. Walls curve continuously without corners; corridors are vaulted; thresholds are arched. The curved surface is not decorative — it is the spatial logic of the circular plan expressed in section. A room without corners reads as larger than its dimensions; a corridor without a visible end point extends perception beyond what the plan contains. Lighting is designed for the curvature. Sources are indirect, positioned to graze the wall surfaces and make the curve visible through shadow. The palette is warm and continuous: limestone, natural timber, linen. These materials change character as the light moves across them through the day; the house is designed to be inhabited at dusk as much as at noon. ### Climate and orientation Kuwait’s climate is severe in summer: intense solar radiation, extreme heat, dust winds from the north-west. The circular plan responds directly. A circular facade has no fully exposed elevation; no single wall receives the maximum solar load at any given hour. The curvature distributes incident radiation across the surface rather than concentrating it on a flat plane. Deep overhangs and planted balconies on the upper level shade the glazing below during the hottest months. The central courtyard regulates the interior microclimate. Surrounded on all sides, sheltered from wind, planted with trees and a water feature, it produces cooler, more humid air than the exterior at the same hour. The pool at the south end of the ground floor extends into this courtyard zone, reinforcing its role as the thermal and spatial heart of the house. The sea lies to the east. From the master terrace, the view extends over the roofline of Messilah toward the water. The house is oriented inward by plan. It opens outward only at the top. --- ## GE Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/ge-apartment/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2025 - Area: 300 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The building stands near the Mercado de Colón. Its facades — ironwork, mouldings, stained glass — date from the late nineteenth century, when Valencia’s bourgeoisie was building with ambition and ornamental density. The proportions of those rooms, the height of the ceilings, the grain of the original ceramic floors: these are the starting conditions of the project, and the measure against which every new decision is tested. ### Around the protected elements The protected elements are not the constraint. They are the structure. The renovation works around them: new plaster surfaces calibrated to the existing relief, bespoke joinery in warm timber that follows the room geometry without mimicking its decoration. Nothing is erased. Nothing is pastiche. Each room is treated as a meeting point between the existing architecture and the new intervention. The distinction between the two periods remains legible — there is no attempt to dissolve one into the other. The relationship is one of acknowledged distance: the new elements know what they are adjacent to and behave accordingly. ### Furniture as extension of the architecture The furniture was selected in close collaboration with the owners. Vintage pieces by Percival Lafer, Sergio Rodrigues, and Alvar Aalto sit alongside contemporary designs by Vincent Van Duysen; bespoke elements were developed as extensions of the architecture, in the same materials and at the same register. These pieces are not neutral. They are chosen for their material weight and formal clarity — for the way they hold the room without dominating it. The apartment is furnished the way it is built: with precision and without excess. ### Material consistency Materials are consistent throughout: travertine, lime plaster, wood, linen. The palette is warm and reduced. Stained glass filters the light from the street-facing rooms into something amber and diffused; the interiors shift character from morning to evening without the lighting scheme needing to do the work. The wet areas maintain the same material logic as the main rooms. Stone continues from floor to wall without interruption; joinery details are resolved with the same precision as the architectural elements. There is no zone of the apartment where the criteria change. --- ## Bnaider Beach House https://balzararchitects.com/work/beach-house/ - Location: Bnaider, Kuwait - Area: 1,500 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress A single-family house on Bnaider Beach, developed in collaboration with Alhumaidhi Architects. The site occupies one of Kuwait’s most distinctive stretches of coastline. The project organises its principal rooms around a single condition: direct orientation toward the turquoise water and white sand that define the place. A sequence of gardens of varying scale leads from the access road to the shore. Two flanking volumes step their terraced facades down to the beach, framing a central living space that opens onto a porch and an infinity pool aligned with the horizon. ### A house oriented entirely toward the beach The foyer, the living area, the kitchen and the suites all open through large frames to the water. The interior plan is composed so that the sea is not a backdrop but the defining element of every room, present from the first threshold onward. ### Gardens as the route to the sea The approach from the access road to the beach is resolved as a sequence of gardens of different scales. A welcoming garden marks the entrance, with a covered area for parking. The service zone follows: staff accommodation, dirty kitchen, laundry and machine room, grouped to one side and concealed from the main route. A larger interior garden then opens to allow both pedestrian movement and direct service access to the boat slipway. The path is deliberately slow. The vegetation, like the water, is treated as a primary material of the project. ### The sea as the first material From the moment of entry, the horizon is the dominant condition. The living room, the kitchen and the principal dining area share a continuous frontage that registers the changing light of the day across the water. Interior finishes — pale stone, lime-washed walls, low-tone joinery — are calibrated to recede in front of that light, so the building disappears into the experience it organises. ### Two wings, a central living space A courtyard flanked by two volumes establishes the threshold to the main house. From the courtyard the buildings extend toward the shore, their facades stepping down in successive terraces to reduce the apparent scale and reinforce the horizontal reading of the composition. At the centre is the principal living room, connected directly to the beach through a porch and an infinity pool aligned with the horizon. Two rear wings hold the secondary programme: gym and multifunctional room to the north, guest bedrooms to the south, each with the autonomy and privacy their use requires. ### Construction The project is being built on Bnaider Beach. The structure, the volumetric composition and the relationship between the two wings and the central living space are visible on site as the work progresses. The following images document the construction. --- ## Sobre Bancales https://balzararchitects.com/work/rural-hotel/ - Location: Requena, Spain - Area: 5,800 m² - Programme: Hospitality - Status: In progress Sobre Bancales is a rural hotel set within the vineyards of Requena, in inland Valencia. The project is characterised by its minimal impact on the environment. Rather than reconstructing the ground to receive the building, the architecture is partially sunken and aligned with the existing contours, occupying its site from within rather than above. Broad sunken platforms hold the rooms and communal areas, reminiscent of the traditional Mediterranean terraces that organise this landscape. A U-shaped volume superimposed on those platforms integrates the complex into the wine-growing scenery, interpreting the project’s considerable dimensions as part of the agricultural composition rather than as an object placed within it. ### A hotel that does not stand above its terrain The project works from a single premise: minimum impact on a landscape that already has its own coherence. Rather than reconstructing the ground to receive the building, the building is partially sunken and its contours are aligned with those of the terrain. The architecture occupies its site from within rather than above. The decision also affords the complex strong bioclimatic performance, with the embedded mass moderating temperature across the seasons. ### Mediterranean terraces as spatial reference Traditional Mediterranean agriculture worked the sides of these hills by cutting flat platforms into the slope, easier to cultivate and stable across generations. The project takes the same logic. Broad sunken platforms hold the rooms and communal areas of the hotel, reading as a contemporary extension of the agricultural terraces that surround them. The reference is not formal but operative: the building uses the same strategy as the landscape it inhabits, at the scale and with the precision that contemporary construction allows. ### Rooms that open onto the cultivated ground Each room faces directly onto the planted platforms. The threshold between the embedded volume and the open terrace is the most worked moment of the project: a covered overhang holds the shade, the floor of the terrace continues the interior plane out into the vines, and the planted edges close the view to one side while opening it entirely to the other. The hotel is inhabited from this in-between condition more than from any enclosed room. ### A U-shaped volume that blends into the wine-growing scenery The hotel is organised as a U-shaped volume, superimposed on the platforms and oriented to integrate with the surrounding vineyards. The configuration encloses a protected courtyard at the heart of the complex while extending the long facades into the planted ground on either side. At full scale, the project’s dimensions are considerable, but the dimensions are interpreted as part of the wine-growing scenery rather than as an object placed within it. The hotel is read as continuous with the agricultural composition that defines this part of Spain. --- ## Ciscar Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/ciscar-apartment/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2016 - Area: 99 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed An apartment renovation in the historic Eixample district of Valencia, on the chamfered corner of an early twentieth-century block. The original plan placed the bedrooms on the principal facade and the living room facing the interior courtyard; the project inverts this. An open living area now sits beside the entry, and the bedrooms move to the rear, lit and ventilated through the courtyard. Walls, ceilings and joinery are white; the floor is natural oak. A single chromatic shift, a green bathroom, registers an ongoing studio inquiry into the relationship between space and material. ### A chamfered plan, inverted The complex geometry of the corner remains intact. The plan does not correct it; it reads it differently, organising the inverted distribution around the angle rather than against it. ### Fewer elements, longer sight lines The new distribution works toward visual continuity. Rooms are organised with the smallest possible number of elements so that sight lines extend across the whole depth of the apartment. A continuous line of light running through the hallway accentuates this reading, marking the principal axis without interrupting it. The intention is not to dissolve the rooms but to release the visual relationship between them, recovering the spatial generosity that the original compartmentalised plan obscured. ### White, oak, one chromatic shift The atmosphere is reduced to a small number of decisions held consistently. Walls, ceilings and fixed joinery are white; floors are natural oak, warm under artificial light. The palette is calibrated to make the apartment a place of rest and quiet, with no surface drawing attention to itself. The single exception is the main bathroom, finished in green. The shift is not decorative. It marks a deliberate inquiry, ongoing in the studio at the time, into the relationship between space, material and chromatic register. --- ## Berlanova https://balzararchitects.com/work/berlanova/ - Location: Moixent, Spain - Area: 460 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: Unbuilt A single-family house in Moixent, inland Valencia, where landscape, architecture and a controlled material register operate as a single composition. The house is approached through the landscape, organised around a protected courtyard, and extended by a long pool split across two levels. ### A house that appears by surprise The approach follows a cinematic sequence. The volume of the house appears and disappears behind the vegetation as the path advances, perceived from different angles and distances. Planted masses conceal the architecture from oblique views, releasing only a frontal reading from the access road. At the end of the path, the house resolves in front of a reception plaza that reveals its symmetry at once. The arrival is not gradual; it is timed by the landscape. ### A courtyard that produces its own microclimate The interior spaces open onto a protected outdoor room. The courtyard is a traditional Mediterranean resource — shaded, enclosed on multiple sides, able to generate a cooler microclimate through sheets of moving water. The strategy is not formal. It responds to the climatic conditions of the inland Valencian terrain, where summer heat and seasonal aridity demand spaces calibrated to moderate them. The materials are natural; the spaces are quiet without insisting on it. ### Two water levels, two registers A long pool extends along the symmetry axis, drawn out as far as the site allows in order to intertwine with the landscape and capture it. To respect the topography, the water is split across two levels. The lower level sits within the courtyard, sheltered on windy days, oriented toward intimacy. The upper level opens completely to the landscape and resolves the panoramic view. The two levels establish a dialogue between openness and protection that organises the entire outdoor experience of the house. --- ## Montevida House https://balzararchitects.com/work/montevida-house/ - Location: Murcia, Spain - Area: 700 m² - Programme: Residential - Status: In progress A single-family house in Murcia, on a single level above a basement, organised so that interior and exterior remain continuously connected through a central garden. Sober volumes of different heights and proportions turn around the outdoor space, producing a play of light and shadow. Three transversal volumes overhang an embankment to extend the living surface; a glazed transversal band connects the longitudinal bays and organises the principal axis of the plan. ### A single level around a garden During the project’s development the family extended the surface to enlarge both garden and interior, producing a plan in which every principal room maintains a direct relationship with the outdoor space. The geometry is composed of regular volumes, generating a play of forms, light and shadow that turns around the garden as its centre. ### Volumes that overhang the embankment An embankment separates the upper access and parking level from the lower garden level around which the house develops. To increase the living surface and the relationship to the exterior, three transversal volumes overhang this embankment, producing a discontinuous facade with breaks that work simultaneously as access points and as more private terraces serving the rooms. Between two of these cantilevered volumes sits the entrance to the property, defining its character from the first moment of arrival. ### A glazed transversal band Longitudinal bands of varying width run perpendicular to the main facade, connected by a glazed transversal band that serves as the principal interior axis and entrance hall. The plan holds a kitchen, a secondary dining and barbecue zone connected to the terrace, a laundry, play spaces, three bedrooms and a suite; the basement holds garage and storage. The outdoor pool resolves the shorter volume. Interior and garden read as one continuous spatial experience, mediated by the transparency of the central band. --- ## Ciutat Vella Apartment https://balzararchitects.com/work/ciutat-vella-apartment/ - Location: Valencia, Spain - Year: 2025 - Area: 200 m² - Programme: Interior - Status: Completed The apartment occupies a building from 1890 in Ciutat Vella, the old town of Valencia, where Roman, medieval and modernist fabric sit within a few streets of one another. It arrived with its period intact: Nolla mosaic floors, wrought ironwork, plaster mouldings, century-old doors, fragments of polychrome paint. These elements are protected. The project takes them as its measure rather than its obstacle — what is original is restored and kept in view, what is new is built to its proportion. ### Two registers, one apartment The plan holds two registers. The public rooms — the dining room, the living room, the enfilade between them — keep the ornament of the original apartment: pale lime-plaster walls, carved cornices, the geometric Nolla mosaic underfoot. The private rooms are lined in dark stained oak, a continuous panelled surface that draws walls, doors and storage into one quiet volume. To move through the apartment is to move between these two conditions, the worked surface of 1890 and the calm of the new work. ### The thresholds are made The two registers meet at the floor. The Nolla mosaic and the stone of the original rooms give way to oak, laid in chevron, in the private wing; the change of material is resolved on a curve, the timber drawn around the edge of the stone rather than cut against it. Each passage from old to new is given a precise line. The transitions are constructed, not assumed. ### Material and light The materials are few: travertine, oak, lime plaster, linen, wool. They are chosen for how they hold light. Travertine lines the bathrooms, warmed by brass. Lime plaster carries the public walls, taking the filtered daylight from the street. Dark oak holds the private rooms, where light is run indirectly along the head of the panelling so the rooms can be inhabited at low level after dark. Colour is kept out. The work is done by texture and by the temperature of the light. ### Furniture as extension of the rooms The furniture continues the architecture. Vintage pieces from Nekonato Gallery sit with works by CLC Arte, chairs by New Works and lighting by Venicem; bespoke pieces were made as extensions of the rooms, in the same materials and at the same register. Nothing competes with the protected fabric. The apartment is furnished the way it is built, with few decisions, each one held. The original apartment stays legible in its public rooms and quiet in its private ones. The two readings hold without blurring. --- Generated from the site database. Last built 2026-09-16.