"AR House 2013" Award to Grupo Aranea

© Jesús Granada

Still catching up on my July articles, I wrote in The Architectural Review on the Lude House in Cehegín, Murcia by Francisco Leiva and Martín López Robles of Grupo Aranea, based in Alicante. The design shares AR's HOUSE 2013 Award (see the full article here).

"The spiral pull of the design carries visitors up to the roof, which visually connects the house to its natural setting, lifting it out of the mundane local streets to find its place in the wider world, almost like a Greek temple. Up on the roof, Francisco Leiva eagerly points out the sights, from the choppy roofscape of the houses below, invisible from the street, to the profile of the historic town center on its hill in the near distance, and the bowl of mountains and hills surrounding the town, with their orchards of apricots and other fruit trees, or cut by the terraces and tailings of marble quarries.... The overlapping, spiral movement of this little house is like that of a sprouting seed, an organic life force in vital contact with planet Earth."

AR House 2013 Joint Winner
Casa Lude, Spain by Grupo Aranea
The Architectural Review
Vol. CCXXXIII, No. 1397
July 2013, pages 30 - 37

The architects on the roof by DC

View of town with unfinished public water park

View of distant marble quarries from roof of house