I think it's time, Caroline, to go and see how the other half live.
Talk about welcome to my humble abode.
Cor, that is a whole lot of house.
He's Piers Taylor, an award-winning architect.
I mean, the depth of this wall, it's four-foot thick.
After you, my lord.
And she's Caroline Quentin,
acclaimed actress and passionate property developer.
This house has the perfect ratio of bedrooms to swimming pools.
We've been given the keys to some
of the most incredible houses in the world.
If we were left alone here for any amount of time, I have a feeling...
We would ruin this house.
To discover the design innovation, passion,
and endurance needed to transform architectural vision
into an extraordinary home.
Look! I'm dumbstruck!
We're travelling the globe.
Meeting architects and owners to explore how their daring homes
respond uniquely to local landscape, climate, and culture.
I think this is probably the greatest house I've ever been in.
Whether it's battling the elements to construct a dream home
on dramatic Scandinavian terrain...
The architect was nervous that things would go wrong.
He couldn't bear to look at it.
Pushing the boundaries of European experimentation...
I think that's it!I think it is.
When I looked at the proposal at the beginning, I was almost shocked.
Celebrating craftsmanship and beauty in Asia...
We've likened this house to dripping
chocolate sauce over vanilla ice cream.
Or going all out for glamour in America.
You just do what you do best, and that is to create a masterpiece.
Piers! Is this too Miami?
This time, we're in a country
which has a rich tradition of flamboyance in architecture -
Spain.
There's something in the Spanish culture -
that toreador in tight trousers with glittery embroidery.
I still feel it in the culture here.
It's brave, it's... Showmanship.Yeah.
I mean, there's nothing quiet about it. It's very strong.
And you think of Gaudi, really.
I mean, the most theatrical way of making buildings, in a way.
Yeah.The most exotic way.
Daring again. Daring. Mould-breaking.
Gaudi threw down the gauntlet for future architects.
And it's this sense of adventure that's brought us to Spain,
where there's so much thrilling architecture.
The same spirit can be found in residential properties too.
So we're heading away from the crowded coastlines
and into Spain's dramatic interior.
It's a land of experimentation.
This is a building made out of what looks like pieces of bridge.
Where architects are rewriting the rule book.
This would be a normal front door,
but it tells you the scale of the building. It's so big.
From high art homes to beautiful spaces for practical living.
You have a wonderful life here. Salud.
We'll uncover some extraordinary homes that challenge and surprise.
That's right. It feels sacred.
It feels sacred, doesn't it?
Our journey begins in the northeast corner of Spain,
in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
For a thousand years, religious travellers have passed
through here on their way to the holy city of Santiago de Compostela.
But we're making a pilgrimage of a different kind.
The home we're visiting is totally unlike the stone farmhouses
found in this beautiful region.
Designed by architects who have recently won the Pritzker Prize,
the Nobel Prize of architecture,
this house has garnered an awful lot of attention internationally,
not least because it's made entirely of rusted metal.
I'm imagining for an architect that the difficulty would be in building
something that kind of reflects the history,
respects the history, but also has a completely new take on it.
Are you excited about seeing this house?
I'm very excited about seeing this house.
I'm making a pilgrimage to see something really significant.
There's a lovely, old, traditional house.
Isn't that really charming?
Beautiful. And when a building is part of a landscape...
Piers, I think that's our building there -
that low-lying, little, tiny...
It looks like little tin shacks.
I think that's it.I think it is.
Here we are.
It cuts into the edge of the hillside, doesn't it?
But is it my imagination, Piers, or is there something slightly comedic
about it because it is just a row of little boxes?
It isn't just a row of little boxes.
I mean, there may be more to it than that.
No, no, but it doesn't...
It could be a load of containers or lorries.
Exactly.It could be someone's parked some lorries up there.
But that's what's so fantastic is that making interesting architecture
isn't about making interesting shapes,
and that's something that this is telling us.
That's fascinating.
Cos I think a lot of people perceive it as actually just a form,
about form, but it's not about form...
Yeah, Frank Gehry and Bill Bauer
making something that says, "Look at me."
This says - "Don't look at me."
Yes, it does, except I am going to look at it.
This house is a really exceptional piece of architecture
by any standard.
Built for a famous chef and her family,
this home is designed to appear like a serious of agricultural buildings
that merge with the landscape.
Created by architects at the top of their game,
it redefines how a domestic building can look.
I'm fascinated by this house.
This feels like the entrance to an art gallery or a theatre.
But it's also curiously like a bit of a motorway underpass,
and I mean that as a compliment.
Because it's heroic and really very un-front-door-like.
I think this might be the way in.
This is the front door I was looking for.
And what's great is that that is front-door size.
Actually, it's about front door width,
and this would be a normal front door.
But it tells you the scale of the building.
It's so big, it's so tall. It's four times as tall
as a normal front door.
And there's yet another entrance in here.
Which has a veil-like quality to it, doesn't it?
Look at this, Piers. Look.
Wow.Have you worked out what this is?
It's a lift.What's fantastic is that it's absurd in many ways
that there's a lift in a piece of ground that's quite flat,
cos you could just walk straight in, but I love the theatre of it.
This is really dramatic.
And I hate lifts.
A key challenge for the architects was to build this four-bedroom
home along the edge of an escarpment.
The underground entrance was excavated and foundations cut
into the ridge line along a 60-metre plot.
Designed to resemble agricultural buildings,
the house is made up of 11 specially crafted steel boxes -
all linked by a steel corridor.
Cleverly hidden by a man-made ridge,
planted up to blend in with the surrounding landscape.
The master bedroom is at one end,
with three further bedrooms at the other.
In between, there's a generous amount of living space.
The lift arrives into the centre of the house.
What's through here?
It's almost disorientating.It is.
It's such a dark entrance.
I've never been in a house where you enter completely in the dark.
With nothing in it to give you any sense of where you are.
And then suddenly the light.
SHE GASPS
I'm speechless.
You thrilled?
I think I'm most thrilled by this sense that there's a building that
in many ways is a piece of high art,
and yet it's only really one or two steps
away from a farmer's slurry pit.
This is rooted in this landscape in the best possible way.
This isn't a house that's scared of its context.
This is more embedded in its agricultural landscape
than the agricultural buildings.
You can almost see the cows coming in to drink at this, can't you?
Now I want to have a look at practically how I would use it.
I'm quite interested in that now because I've walked into
what feels quite abstract and I'd love to find out
about how it functions as a house, I suppose.
This house is truly minimalist.
I'm really enjoying the simplicity and silence.
So I can take a good look around in peace.
The thing about houses like this is they always look so immaculate,
they are so minimalist.
But like every family, they've got clutter.
I just have to find out where it is.
HOLLOW ECHO
Oh. Uh-huh.
Oh! This is where they hide
all those things that you and I see
for the rest of our lives.
All the time.
Oh!
Interesting.
There are even entire rooms behind doors.
This house could have felt cold and uninviting,
but through their manipulation of the play of light on steel,
the architects have created a warm and captivating atmosphere.
It makes me wonder why more houses aren't made completely from metal.
And I wonder if I'll need a can opener to find the television.
There's nothing on.
There's a steely determination to hide life's functionality here.
Although it's aesthetically pleasing,
I imagine it can be a challenge to live with.
Nowadays it seems that every house has a room which has a specific
function and you need to know what every bit of it is for.
But this house has more void, more emptiness than actual room,
and it's in these voids, in this empty space,
that for me this house comes alive.
I'm completely blown away by it.
Unfortunately, I've come to the bedroom
and there doesn't appear to be a bed.
Unless I'm missing something.
And, like the rest of the house, it's...
It's hidden behind a panel.
Hang on.
Ingenious, these Spanish.
Oh! SHE LAUGHS
I need to roll right under the stairs and go to bed!
I think this building is intriguing both inside and out.
It's embedded right on the edge of the escarpment
and becomes as much a piece of landscape as a home.
This house really has one single simple idea
that binds it all together.
The main components of this diagram are a long corridor that runs from
east to west on the edge of this escarpment,
and along that corridor sits the pieces of living space
that are broken down into small components,
so when you arrive you only ever see small bits
of building in landscape.
What happens then is the landscape is brought like fingers
with the water, the growing spaces,
all of these brought right the way into the heart of this house.
All these bits of living space look into landscape.
The building uses landscape to make a piece of architecture.
And it's quite some piece of architecture.
As much as anything now, I'd like to find out from architect
Rafael Aranda what the clients really wanted
when they approached them to design the house.
There's also by and large one material, one single material,
that binds this house together. Why steel?
But this house is also a place that has extraordinary
qualities within it, an extraordinary atmosphere,
and one of the atmospheres that I like the most
is that of the very dark and the very light.
There's nothing in between.
It's an experience enjoyed by the owner Fina Puigdevall,
who lives here with her husband and two daughters.
CHICKENS CLUCK Hello, hennies.
We're exploring the kitchen garden below the house.
These eggs, are they for home or the restaurant?
The restaurant and the home.
Oh, both? You use them for both? Yes.
Fina's a Michelin-starred chef who is passionate about cooking
with fresh, local ingredients.
Can we take in maybe some chard? Yeah.We call this rainbow chard.
Arco iris. Arco iris.Si, en Catalan - arc de Sant Marti.
Arc de Sant Marti.Yeah.
Can I take some radishes?Yes.
You can't eat veg fresher than this.
Unless, like a slug, you eat your lettuce while it's still growing.
Oh! He's a big one. So he's good. We'll give that carrot to Piers.
The kitchen is Fina's natural habitat,
and it's probably a good idea not to get under the feet of a chef
while she's hard at work.
The use of steel and rusted steel is quite a bold statement, isn't it?
I'd expect it to feel quite intimidating and quite rough.
But this house is actually incredibly welcoming and very warm.
Very warm. I mean, steel is a warm colour.
This mild steel that is corroding slightly
has this red, warm, almost leather-like feel to it.
Raw things are often warmer than things that are finished
and polished and everything.
And I think this material gives this room a really sumptuous feeling.
It makes it feel luxurious, actually.
Even though it's mild steel that's just going rusty.
It's lovely to bring the nature right...actually into the house.
Look, the dragonflies are coming in.
They're mating on their way in.Yes.
Maybe that's a device to keep the chickens out,
because actually without that, the chickens could just come in.
Which I think would be really nice, actually.
There's no chicken on the menu today.
Finish.Just that home-grown veg.
For me?Yes. But, yeah...
Y luego...We picked it. All your own work?Yeah.Yes.
We worked very hard. That's beautiful.For you.
Delicious. Wow.
So, what has the architecture of this
brought to your life?
Yeah.
What is the thing that brings you most delight, most joy
about living here?
Peace? Yes.To peace? Yes.This house and to peace.
I had my doubts about living in a big steel box,
but I'm warming to the idea.
I think at the end of the day, which this is,
you can judge a house by the quality of its fire.
I actually love the generosity of this fire.
And I love the way that the fire is level
with the ground around it.
Have you ever seen a bigger flue?
Be careful how you answer that.
THEY LAUGH
I have these friends that at the end of the year, they write down all the
things they want to get rid of and put them in the fire
and they go up the chimney.
The bad things in their lives.
Is there anything in your life you need to banish now?
Erm, well, there's so many things,
I don't think this fire's big enough, really.
Do you not think? No.
I think you've got it pretty much sorted, Caroline.You reckon?
You only see the best of me, though, Piers.
There's only the best of you, Caroline.Yeah.
We've left farmland behind
and travelled south-west to the outskirts of the capital city.
Here in the suburbs, one architect has chosen to showcase his work
by building a really unusual family home.
I grew up in suburbia and the thing I remember about suburban houses
is the sort of similarity that nobody really wants
to do anything out of the ordinary
or anything that'll make the neighbours stare.
The twitching curtains...Yeah.
..when anyone paints their front door
a subtly different shade of beige. Exactly.
But this architect isn't worried about creating a stir
in the neighbourhood.
He's done something very different.
Wow.
# I want to break free
# I want to break free... #
Unhampered by the usual strictures of a suburban build,
this house wears its challenging architectural identity like armour,
on the outside.
For the ancient Greeks,
Hemeroscopium was a place that only existed in the mind,
a place defined by light.
Will this concrete house live up to its namesake?
This is a hugely grand entrance in the classical tradition.
This is an extraordinary covered portico.
But it's not a classical building.
I mean, this is a building made out of huge bits of concrete,
made out of what looks like pieces of bridge.
It reminds me a little bit of - I don't know - Stonehenge,
or you know when you go to Athens and there are piles of columns
that have fallen in on top of each other?
It feels historic, doesn't it?
It does. I mean, this is a bit of ancient Greece
in many ways that's landed in a Spanish suburb.
But it's made out of 21st-century materials like concrete,
and there's a swimming pool and a table tennis table and a speaker.
It's the ancient and the modern all in one place.
Creating this home was a challenge.
It took owner architect Anton Garcia-Abril a year
just to calculate the exact positioning of each element.
The house is made of seven vast concrete and steel beams,
each supporting the other in the form of an upward spiral,
held in place by a 20-tonne lump of granite
which acts as a counterweight.
Outside, the beams form a large courtyard around the swimming pool.
Downstairs, there's plenty of family living space,
and upstairs there's the main bedroom
and another for the children.
The real genius of this house
is that it's made of sections of precast concrete and steel
normally found in huge construction projects.
Take a closer look at Hemeroscopium and bridges, motorways,
overpasses and even drainage ditches start to appear.
But, miraculously, put it all together and the result is heroic.
This is a dining room and this is a living room.
But again, unlike most suburban houses, they're made out of the most
enormous pieces of precast concrete of this scale.
This is a precast concrete plank on the floor,
the sort that you'd make a car park out of.
And this inside and outside wall at
the back here is a 20-metre long precast concrete I-beam.
The structure has been left exposed throughout the house,
creating a striking background for informal family life.
I can't go on without showing you this special surprise
which leads off the bedroom.
Look at this.
Imagine waking up in the morning and then thinking,
"Oh, I just fancy a little bit of a swim."
And just off your bedroom is this.
Not a bad way to start the day, is it?
The spectacular floating swimming pool
is supposed to give the swimmer the experience of flying.
I'm looking forward to taking flight later.
It's remarkable that a house made of bits of motorway
can be so homely, despite the 230-tonne concrete shell
and mammoth proportions.
And the height of the house offers an added bonus.
An outdoor space that would be the envy
of any suburban curtain twitcher.
And this is the perfect vantage point
to see how this extraordinary house,
this huge structure, sits in ordinary suburban Madrid.
And we know we are in suburbia because of the sounds around us.
We've got dogs barking, chainsaws, cars starting, birdsong,
and somehow this house is just plonked down right in the middle
of all this ordinary Spanish life.
Considering how bold the whole of the exterior is,
the interior doesn't need to make quite as much of a statement.
Have you discovered, Caroline,
this is actually quite a straightforward house inside?
The kitchen isn't perched at the end
of an enormous cantilevered bit of concrete or something.
No, it's a modest house inside an extraordinary exterior.
Because it's all about that space, that living room.
It's all about this.
Outside space, the weather,
and having a wonderful place to be outside.
And, of course, in a place like this you want, I guess,
four times as much living space as domestic space.
And they've got that, haven't they?
They do, yeah. I mean, that's perfect.
I mean, this is living space. This is the key living space.
This is the house. The rest of it is sort of incidental.
It's ideal. I think it's a perfect space.Oh!
Look at the spin on that.
Oh! Get you! I expect when they're all here, they are doing this,
playing ping-pong, you know?
Not bad, is it, to be in the suburbs and have all this play stuff around?
I mean, this is where the action is.
For the record, I thrashed him. Just saying.
Time for a celebratory dip in that mid-air pool.
This house has the perfect ratio of bedrooms to swimming pools.
Two bedrooms, two swimming pools.
From its floating pool to its cantilevered structure,
there's an interesting and unusual architectural mind at work here.
I'm keen to find out more from Anton, the architect.
So there's seven key pieces of structure with a stone on top
that stops everything from falling over, I guess.
Well, there's a heli-coil structure.
It's a helix.It's a helix.
Each piece is absolutely essential to the equilibrium of the whole,
and all that circuit culminates with the 20-tonne granite stone.
Were you surprised by the scale of all of this when it came together?
Yeah. I was very surprised
that even though we used these heavy traces of structure
that are massive, we obtained a very light space,
a very transparent and light space
by the action of lifting...of the effort of the structure,
of almost unearthing,
the space became fluent and light and transparent.
Unsurprisingly, not many building contractors
would touch Anton's house with a barge pole,
which meant he had to oversee the work himself.
Having calculated every position and manoeuvre in advance,
it took just seven days to build the structure of his family home.
And this is a family house, isn't it?
You have children.
We have four kids, different ages from four to 16.
The 16-year-old loves the courtyard to do his birthday parties.
And the four-year-olds love the transparency,
because they could be all over the house
without being confined or enclosed.
How do you feel about the space now?
Where is the most potent bit of joy in this house?
I think there's two moments of joy in this house.
The social moment that is confined and embraced by the structure
in this courtyard. It's an open courtyard.
And another extraordinary moment of this house
is that you get the panoramic views when you go to bed at night.
But we love this house. And so do we.
This is not a precious house.
It makes you want to climb all over it.
That's great. He's been longing to do that all-day.
Work it. That's nice. That's nice. That's nice, Piers.
These I-beams tower above me.
I can't even begin to get anywhere near it, you know?
It's a big piece of structure. It's, you know, eight, nine feet.
Everything here is big.
Actually, that is a great shot.
The thing that you're standing next to
that now looks enormous is a big Vierendeel truss.
God, that's a great shot. Can you just move that way a bit?
Yeah, sorry. No, no, no, no.
I'm trying to get it without you, actually.You want to get me out?
Yeah. It's a great bit of structure.
I mean, that is the perfect series of two trusses coming together.
When Piers starts talking double trusses, it's time to move on.
This house is really unusual.
I mean, it's a real one-off,
because you almost never see structure used
with a primary purpose of making space.
I mean, there's something really poetic in taking these things,
these off-the-shelf pieces of structure,
and using them to make domestic space.
I think what will always stay with me about this house
is arriving to find an heroic Greek temple
behind a gate on a suburban street.
It's nice to walk off into the sunset with you, P.
It is. Where are we going now?
We're going off the beaten track...
..to a sleepy historic corner of north-west Spain
barely touched by tourism.
These medieval towns... I mean,
really, when someone opens a window here,
I expect them to come out in sort of doublets and hose.
Don't they?
I noticed you did this morning and congratulations, by the way.
Not many men can carry that off!
This may seem an unlikely place to find cutting-edge architecture.
But this is Spain and anything is possible.
Our next house turns tradition on its head.
Not far out of town, there's an arts project
going on unlike anything else in the world.
We're eager to find out more.
And it's out there somewhere in this densely forested mountain region.
Our sat nav has brought us to the end of the road.
SHE SIGHS Top of the hill.
And still no sign of civilisation.
The architects of this holiday home
deliberately set out to challenge our preconceptions of how to live.
They were given free rein to build this house,
and it shows what can happen
if you give architects creative freedom.
It's a very singular thing, isn't it?
A big O on a mountain top.
So this is how you would command a site, historically, isn't it?
This is...Find the highest point?
Well, this is... This is a little hilltop fort, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
There is something ancient,
like we stumbled upon some sort of ancient civilisation.
But also it feels quite futuristic.
But a timeless way of making a place, ultimately.
At the top of a hill, push out your defensible space
to the outside, and then make a sacred space in the middle.
That's right, it feels sacred.
It feels sacred, doesn't it? It does in a way. It really does.
And it's not often I say that, because it sounds like a cliche.
But this does.Yeah.
Sort of an Aztec sort of sacred quality?
Yeah. But I think that is because it makes sense for where it is.
A sensible way...
Well, it's a sensible way to make a
bit of space that contains something else.
This is wilderness, this is wild country out here.
And this is untamed wilderness.
Assigned a plot on a hilltop plateau,
the architects chose a circular 45-metre diameter design,
so as to make the most of the panoramic views.
Four rows of steel columns support the roof,
while walls of glass help the building dissolve
into the landscape.
There are four crescent-shape segments of domestic space,
including an outdoor utility room, three bedrooms
and a living room kitchen diner.
Oh, I like that, because that sounds like a Starship Enterprise door.
Psssshhhh!Pssssssh!
I could never make that noise. I've never been able to.
You just did.Did I?
What's this, P?It's just polycarb. Polycarbonate with some...
It looks like expanded aluminium mesh behind.
For shading, I guess.
It's a good space for a kitchen. It's a little...
Sliver?Yes, a sliver of building, but...
Oh, OK.That opens up, I think.
For most of the year, you can open all of these screens.
Oh, hang on, I can help you do this.
How's that? Hang on.
Push!Nearly. Oh.
Come and check it out from here!
Oh, yeah!And the character of this room has changed completely.
It suddenly becomes one of the most amazing kitchens in the whole world,
because the wilderness is just here.
It's now the biggest room in Spain. Yeah.
We're out in the wilds. We're by the mountains!
And you have another perspective on this world
that this has just given you.
It's wonderful, because it's a big zero,
and yet just by moving from this bit of the zero
to outside the zero...
..the whole house changes personality!
I think it's the edges of buildings that are the most important.
The edge is where you can sit, where you can perch,
the bit that separates the in from the out,
the bit that divides things without there literally being a wall.
Yeah.What's wonderful is how close to nature
this house allows us to be.
It's a beautiful place to sit and contemplate.
Or as my friend says, "Complicating the world."
You could spend a lot of time here
complicating the world, couldn't you?Yeah.
These open-plan, crescent-shaped living places are pretty radical,
but somehow they work.
I like it that really it's just bits of furniture
that deal with separating spaces.
But they all do something.
And this stuff, I mean, this stuff is the sort of stuff
that if you're a punk singer in the 1970s,
you would have made a dress out of.
It's fantastically trashy in the best sense.
Do you reckon this is an industrial fabric?
Yeah, this is reflective aluminium fabric that...
It actually keeps heat in, that's what it's for.
So this is for the winter?
Yeah, you can shut it in the winter,
but what's great is that you can shut it even in the summer,
if you want it to filter the sunlight.
Oh, very good.
But the way it deals with light and surface is beautiful.
I mean, that stuff I think is beautiful.
I think the quality of the light filtering through
that expanded metal and this polycarbonate is beautiful.
I mean, it's really sumptuous, this house, in some ways.
It's a beautiful thing,
but it's made out of stuff that is just industrial materials.
The floors are polished concrete? This is polished concrete, yeah.
It's had the surface ground off,
and you see the exposed aggregate, you know?
So that looks like a terrazzo floor?
It looks like terrazzo, but it's polished concrete.Yeah.
And the lights are just hanging.
I mean, it's a really simple way of making a building,
but it's really sophisticated at the same time
in terms of how it makes space.
Creating this circular property was an architectural challenge,
as the roof and floor are each continuous stretches of concrete.
The floor was poured in one day, working against the clock
to ensure that 550 tonnes of concrete didn't set
Before the circle was complete.
And with 800 scaffolding poles providing support,
the process was repeated to create the roof.
Resulting in two seamless rings.
This house has such a simple idea,
because the idea is one single, simple circle.
That is it.
A space of just empty landscape.
In the middle of this is a piece of Spanish wilderness.
There is another circle that runs around the outside,
which stops the wilderness, the real wilderness, from coming in.
The space that is the doughnut is
to all intents and purposes a domestic space.
And how this architect has made it usable is to turn it into a square.
What they've done is add in four straight walls across the plan.
And what these square walls do is, of course, allow you
to place things like beds and kitchens and bathrooms, etc.
But I think the best thing, of course, is that you never quite know
whether you're inside or outside, or whether
you're part of this huge bit of wilderness
or whether you're still inside this protected inner circle.
This is just a very simple square within a circle.
Exactly.
The great joy of this house is that
all the rooms open up wide to the elements.
And I don't just mean the kitchen. I mean all the rooms.
The bedrooms and the bathrooms too.
# All the ducks are swimming in the water
# Fal-de-ral-de-ral-de Fal-de-ral-de-ral-de
# All the ducks are swimming in the water
# Fal-de-ral-de-ral-de Fal-de-ral-de-ral-de... #
I really love the way that this living space works in the round.
And also the ambiguous relationship between inside and out.
Just over the hill is a second high-concept house.
Both homes have been built for Frenchman Christian Bourdais.
Rather than collect modern art, he collects modern architecture.
His aim is to create a park with holiday rentals,
designed by some of the most adventurous architects in the world.
He's currently making a film in Israel.
Hello.Bonjour, bonjour!
Bonjour, Christian. Je suis Caroline...
Non.
Hi. From the moment we arrived, it's such a fun place to be.
What we want to do with the Solo House programme
is kind of not speaking about square metres,
but about picking a real architectural experience.
And is that how you came up with the idea of this project?
The idea was to make an architectural collection of houses
in which all the architects can go a little bit further
than they are used to go.
But what is important for me is choosing of this team of architects,
who are supposed to be, from my opinions,
the next generation of important architects in the world.
Where does it come from, this desire to work with new architecture?
We are very close to a generation of artists,
very good artists, international artists.
And the idea was to give the same liberty of creation in architecture
as an artist has.
The world is going against architecture.
Developers today give so many restrictions
that the architects...
It's not so easy for the architects to express the creativity.
And ultimately, Christian, you are going to curate
this whole collection of buildings.
How many will there be?15 houses.
Wow!But the idea is to really create a place in Europe
where we concentrate experiences in architecture
unique in the world.
A sneak preview of other houses Christian wants to build.
With architects given carte blanche, the only limit is imagination.
The real luxury that I found in this house isn't in the fixtures
or fittings, but in the pure relationship
it has to architectural theory.
This is a house that reminds me of the joy
of the artistry of architecture.
You can really experiment and explore ideas
for their own sake. Don't you think?
Yeah, I do. I agree.
What can I do?
Go and get your trunks on.
For our final house, we've come to the south-east corner of Spain.
The arid landscape here
has been the backdrop for many Spaghetti Westerns.
It's very no-nonsense, this landscape, isn't it?
It is.You don't see too many
flash houses or people showing off, do you?
No, you really don't.
There's not that sort of swimming pool culture either, is it?
No, it's not bling villa... No...Spain, is it?
We've heard about three sisters
who asked their architects to create an elegant rural getaway
out in what feels like the middle of nowhere.
Hang on. Slow down, slow down, slow down. Slow down.
That's it. That is it.
# Three That's the magic number
# Yes it is It's the magic number... #
The architects here were tasked
with creating a family home for communal living.
But each of the three families also wanted their own private space.
The result - three separate homes linked by a shared courtyard.
A mini village that cleverly gives the sisters all they asked for.
# Three is the magic number... #
This is the least precious,
extraordinary home in Spain, isn't it?
I mean, this is beautiful,
but actually really basic at the same time.
I mean, this is much more open, of course, this side.
I mean, it faces the view, the light...
It's away from the road.
Now it makes sense that it's for three different families.
Each family, each sister...
Yeah...has her own sort of dining area out in the sun.
Each family has their own little courtyard
outside what looks like maybe their sitting room or something.
They all seem to have a little place to go and eat and relax in the sun.
This is the living side of the house, I suppose.
The building blocks are very simple.
I mean, they're all mono pitches, all have single pitches.
There is no complexity in the building blocks,
but the way they're put together makes the spaces.
Can you tell from here, Piers,
can you tell if they are all almost identical little houses,
or are they different?
They are identical, but one is flipped.
But you don't get a sense of the repetition, do you?
Because they look different, the way they're placed.
A more conventional arrangement
would have been to set the houses in a simple row.
But by creating a courtyard,
there's always a shady retreat from the desert temperatures.
All three houses have a private outside space
and a roof terrace off the master bedroom upstairs.
Downstairs, the layouts are similar, with a kitchen dining room,
living room and two bedrooms.
All are clad in local rough sawn pine,
which helps it blend in with the colours of the landscape.
This is a timber building on the outside,
and what's interesting is that timber isn't the Spanish way.
They don't really make timber-frame buildings.
So, of course, on the inside, it's all masonry.
The structure is masonry.
And it's actually really beautiful,
because it's made in a very rudimentary way.
This is really ordinary stuff.
This is the Spanish vernacular,
which is a concrete frame and a beam and block floor for the first floor.
And actually that is how they make
the most ordinary domestic buildings.
But there's no attempt to soften it, to cover it up,
to make it into something more refined,
because the virtue of this building is that it's really ordinary,
and any contractor around here could make it
out of the stuff they already have
using techniques that they already know.
And I think that is its beauty. It's really down to earth.
One of the things I really love about this,
the first of the houses that I've seen,
is that there is nothing precious about it at all.
This is a house where people really live.
It was important to the sisters that they each have a private home.
A lovely little girl's bedroom.
The women jointly run a successful
fashion business together in the city.
Here they retreat, each to their own personalised living space.
They're protected from their other sisters'
sort of eating area or patio, whatever you want to call it,
and then they get their own stretch of this fantastic mountain scape,
just to spend time with their little
bit of a family, with their children.
What have you found?
What I've found is the village square.
I mean, here we are standing in that square that...
Indeed...is in a way the most important space
in a village, isn't it?
And this is where, I suppose, here, but also in those villages,
people come to eat, greet, meet, drink.
And also here I feel that you're protected from the mountains
and the wind that must rattle through here on occasion.
Absolutely. And the kids will be playing here,
the dogs will be sleeping in the sun, snapping at flies.
I mean, it's great, isn't it? Peeling potatoes for, you know...
The dogs won't be doing that, but the people who live here will be
peeling potatoes for evening dinner.
I mean, it's great, isn't it? I love it.
Later, the courtyard will be full of friends and family.
But there's time for a local tipple with the three sisters.
Maria Angeles, Rene and Manuca.
Why particularly did you build your house here on this piece of land?
My father has some land here,
and then we decided to build a house.
I always said,
"In this piece of land, we will build a house in the future."
Even when you were little, you said that?
Yes. I mean, I don't know why, but we had this dream.
And five years ago or six years ago,
we decided to build, to build the dream.
Did you... Was it your dream, too, Rene?
Was that your dream?Yes, yes. Because we spent our summer holidays
very close to here where our grandparents were.
And we were together in a very big house with all our cousins.
We were around 20 cousins.
How fantastic. My father... With only one bathroom.
My father was... There were seven brothers and sisters,
and we were grown like savage people.
All together and going to the river to have a bath, and we said
we want our kids to do the same.
To grow together, love walking, love picking...
With more toilets.
So how many toilets have you got now?We have got six toilets.
Six toilets.
Was there ever a moment when you thought...
Maria, did you ever think,
"I don't want to live with my sisters all the time.
"I'll live on my own?"
Yes. But then, we are very practical
and then we decided to make with the architect,
you know, the shape of these houses.
But we have, you know,
we have our door and also we have the outside as a space.
They are private.
Private.You don't see another one.
No, I've noticed that. You can't see your sisters.
Who has the best house?
They are the same. For me, it's mine.
For her, it's... For me, it's mine.Yes.
You have a wonderful life here.
Salud.Salud. Don't you? Salud.
Salud, darling, thank you.
Oh!Yeah, it's very good.
It's obvious the sisters are really happy with the layout.
The architects rose to the challenge in a very creative way,
and I want to find out how they went about the process of responding to a
really complex brief.
There's a very nice balance between the private space,
but also the communal space, the other side, the village square.
Yeah.You know, that...
With the kitchen looking at the common space.
Yeah.We researched about cortijos,
which is the Spanish word for these rural houses,
and we tried to translate something of this
way of living to this house.
And these traditional houses
always have a courtyard in the centre,
and all the houses look at this courtyard.
So this surely is the essence of this house,
hearing kids' voices and
hearing the sort of freedom that they have,
because in a lot of contemporary houses
things are fairly controlled.
And almost to the point where, in some houses,
furniture is screwed down
and children are on their best behaviour.
But not here.No. Not at all, not at all.
Maybe it's a kind of philosophy,
so the house is for them. It's not...
And it's for life, and life is not...
I can imagine that as this family grows up
and they have grandchildren,
and you can imagine that they extend another one
and they make another one and...
Yeah. Why not? Why not? It's no problem.
Simple, rustic design.
Hi! Hi!
To give these fabulous women what they love...
..quality family time.
LIVELY CHATTER
For me, this is what architecture is all about.
About creating a place for family, for friends, to spend time together.
Do you feel that?I do.
I mean, I think architecture that doesn't have people in it
isn't really architecture. You know, it's just...
Buildings...static buildings.
Yeah.But I think that, you know, for people to be able to use
buildings in such an un-precious way,
with kids running around, with things everywhere,
that's perfect, really. Do you think of it as one house?
Do you call it one house? This? In reality, they are three houses.
One, two, three. But...
It's still one house.
One house, three house... One house, three sisters.
Thank you so much for having us here.
Thank you for coming. Lovely to meet you. Thank you.
ALL: Salud.
And the architects, we should drink to the architects as well,
who made this place. No, not the architects! No!
Oh, OK.
Our Spanish architectural adventure has been a revelation.
We've seen some extraordinary experimental homes.
From a high-art masterpiece that speaks to the landscape,
to an heroic suburban family home.
In many ways, we've even seen the future.
This country can be daring and brave,
but perhaps most excitingly,
it's pushing the boundaries of architecture.
Next time, we're in India...
Did you ever want to be made into a sandwich?
..where a new generation of architects are running wild...
It became a little bit like jazz,
where you kind of improvise a little bit.
..drawing on the past to create daring modern houses...
Look! I'm dumbstruck.
..in dramatic landscapes,
as once again we go in search of the world's most extraordinary homes.