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Architects Spain. The first thing one might notice about the houses and other projects of Fran Silvestre and his studio of architects in Spain is their particular atmosphere of extravagantly understated elegance and luxury, which is as recognizable in its own right as the work of, say, John Lautner or John Pawson. While this first impression may seem rather superficial, it points us towards a difficult-to-define quality in the works, what we might call an overall “geist” or “gestalt”, that runs very deep, and that is far more complex and interesting than a mere question of “style” or “branding”.

One approach to this depth and complexity begins with the evident tension in these works between formal and practical questions. Silvestre’s designs are
not simply solutions to given design problems, though he tends to present them as such. They absorb and distill the myriad issues of program, site and context, structure, building technologies and so on, subsuming them into the play of space and form that could be understood as the true subject of his architecture.

The designs transform the particulars of each building into simple schemes of expansive spatial relations, using a formal vocabulary of abstract lines, planes and, in certain cases, simple curves, in a rather Miesian idealization of Modernism. Silvestre’s works comprise a series of repetitions and variations on these spatial themes, which in their chronological development trace his growth as an architect, the expanding reach of his formal investigations, and the impact of adapting this formal repertoire to new problems and larger programs.

But at the same time, and as is to be expected, this formal play embodies the practical questions that it so vigorously dominates. The spaces that result may often seem generic, and apt for any possible function or purpose, but this is not the case. The space labeled on the plan as the “living area” assumes the spatial configuration and practical provisions this functional category requires. In the same sense, the garage is a garage, even if it’s floor is paved in the same white marble tiles as the rest of the house, and its opening to the street is enclosed in the same sheer plane of floor-to-ceiling glass (as in the Hofmann House).

Thus, the distillation of the program, context and material process of building also meets a certain point of resistance that, in turn, conditions the formal play. In this sense, it would be difficult to define the perfect form of a given design in a Platonic sense. Any hypothetical movement towards such an idealization finds its limits in these conditioning circumstances, which in practice profoundly determine the actual design.

For example, the deep roof overhangs and projecting walls that often frame the continuous walls of glass, like a bookcase, serve mainly to control the penetration of sunlight through different seasons. We could thus argue that they represent an adaption of the generic Miesian pavilion, as in the Farnsworth House, to a Mediterranean setting. These enclosing planes generally have a considerable thickness, which conveys an implicit association with the typical masonry construction of the Mediterranean, rather than the lighter, framed structures of northern Europe which were the implicit point of reference for the Miesian pavilion. Thus, seemingly abstract features harbor important cultural and contextual cues.

The greatest point of practical resistance to the will-to-form of Silvestre’s designs is found in the question of their supporting structures. Silvestre
pushes against the limits of normal structural practice in his effort to achieve seemingly impossible spans of unsupported and uninterrupted spatial enclosure. This singular battle against gravity, and in search of weightlessness, is I think
the factor that contributes most to the particular character of his work, its atmosphere of extravagant but understated luxury, which is based not so much on fine finishes and materials, but rather on an expansive ease of spatial extension achieved through a great but largely invisible effort.

The standard Miesian and Corbusian formula would have offered him a simple structural solution for his open plans: the structure is expressed in a grid of columns independent of the non-structural vertical planes. But Silvestre rejects the march of columns, window mullions and other repetitive elements that
would break up the free flow of space into rhythmic intervals. Thus, the work of structural support in his designs is integrated into the walls, as we have noted, as well as hidden inside partitions and cabinetry. And as a result, his efforts to represent these vertical elements as apparently free and de-materialized planes always requires a degree of sleigh-of-hand and structural daring, a game he evidently relishes.

For example, the roof of the Hofmann House is supported exclusively by four steel columns hidden in the interior core of bedrooms and service spaces, allowing the window wall to be completely uninterrupted on three sides, and leaving enormous cantilevers on either end, which span the open spaces of the living area and studio. Furthermore, the massive wall at the back of the house, which towers over the roof to block views of a neighboring house, is lifted off the ground across its entire length so as to provide natural light to the core. This structural flourish frames the house, and the terrace in front of it, like a splendid peacock’s tail. The roof assembly is thus a massive, asymmetrical T in section, which provides a greater degree of stiffness for the large cantilevers than the roof plane alone, although the support columns on the far side of the T must work as much in tension as in compression.

In other projects, such as the Balint House, Fran Silvestre uses the bedroom partitions of the upper floors as structural elements, together with the floor and ceiling, in a full-story Vierendeel truss, in order to achieve the free spans of uninterrupted space for the ground floor living area.

In other projects the structural drama is more evident, as in the Casa del Acantilado or House on a Cliff in Alicante, where the dwelling is cantilevered over an abrupt slope, supported only from the back and by a single, towering side wall, in a striking asymmetrical arrangement, with the rest of the house projecting away from it into space.

Silvestre’s feats of structural prowess, however, are at the service of his spatial vision, which must be analyzed in its own right. His residential work falls into three main types, with variations and exceptions: projects that are organized around a terrace, a garden and a view. The first, which we might call the “court house” type, is a single-story pavilion (though with a nearly-hidden lower floor), which is spatially integrated with an expansive outdoor terrace, as in the Hofmann and Atrium houses. The pavilion is set against the edges of the lot, with private and service spaces facing the protected back of the site, and living spaces connecting directly with the terrace via an uninterrupted curtain of nearly frameless sliding glass panels. The interior organization is linear, with private spaces lined up beside the living area along a long corridor facing the terrace, almost like the compartmented car of a train.

The second type is generally a two-story house set in a garden, with bedrooms on the upper floor. Here each story is often articulated as an independent “bookcase” volume, with continuous glazing on two opposing facades, looking towards the street and the back garden, and more solid walls on the narrow sides. Silvestre always misaligns the two floors, shifting them horizontally in relation to one another to create more dynamic compositions. In the House in a Pine Forest, the top floor overhangs the front of the house and shifts back on the opposite side, something like an open box of matches. In the House of Silence, the upper floor is a windowless rectangle that floats over the largely-glazed lower level; the continuous glazing of the bedrooms is enclosed in walled terraces. In the small, single-story Breeze House, Silvestre creates the illusion of two overlapping horizontal volumes. Two deeply-framed “bookcase” windows are set at 90o to one another; one is raised off the ground and the other has a lowered ceiling, so that they seem to be the projecting ends of overlapping, coupled volumes. In the Balint House, the two floors are fused together into a streamlined oval, with the continuous windows on each end deeply recessed behind cantilevered balconies.

It is worth pausing a moment to take a look at the ground floor of one of the most expansive versions of this type, the Aluminum House in Madrid. The roughly square plan is divided inside into three unequal spatial bands that run from one end of the volume to the other. The bands of the large “day area” and the narrower dining room and kitchen are located behind the continuous glazed facades on opposite sides of the volume, which overlook the front and back gardens respectively. The entry and circulation hall occupies the central band, together with a strip of smaller service spaces beside it. This central hall is expressed on the more solid side walls with glazed openings, thus marking the interior spatial division on these facades.

The plan is much like those of the simplified neo-Palladian plantation houses of colonial North America, with their central stair halls and rooms to each side, or the Neoclassical Miesian versions of Philip Johnson and others of the 1950s, as analyzed by Colin Rowe in “Neoclassicism and Modern Architecture”.(1) But the differences are notable as well: the plan is not symmetrical, and it is not frontally organized.

The circulation axis is perpendicular to the view axis, which it partially interrupts, resulting in a rather Janus-headed division between the living spaces on either side. The successive turns in direction from the street to the entry, and then into the living spaces, bring to mind similar complexities studied by Kenneth Frampton in “Frontality vs. Rotation”. (2) In short, these subtle formal differences give the plan a considerable dynamism when compared to the models cited by Rowe.

Returning to our review of domestic types, the houses organized around a
view include the clifftop projects of Alicante, the Costa Brava, the Villa Zarid in Tarifa and the Hollywood Hills. Here the organization follows the model of Mies’ Tugendhat House, with entry from above and interiors organized in a line behind the continuous glass facade overlooking the view. The structural means required to achieve these “hanging” terraces becomes an important expressive factor.

In the Alicante House, the stair from the house to the pool deck penetrates the supporting wall in its descent, again producing a dramatic duality. In the project for the Hollywood Hills, the base supporting the house angles slightly inwards, creating a handsome shadow play of subtly folded planes at different levels, which meet along a knife-sharp edge. Silvestre first introduced such angled modeling in the House Below a Castle, again in order to differential the floors, and to integrate the openings in the angled wall planes, so that they read almost as weightless folding screens. In Tarifa, on the other hand, much of the sculptural incident appears to arise from the descent from the point of entry into the house via a series of rooftop terraces and stairs that are integrated into the rocky site.

The sprawling House of Seven Gardens would appear to break with these types,
if only for its size. The project extends over the site via building volumes that
are fragments of overlapping circular arcs. Again, the tangential, knife-edge overlapping intersections and splits between these arcs, expressed across different levels, are one of the project’s sensual pleasures. The opposing arms of two of these semi-circular arcs frame the two larger volumes of the living area and a suite that includes guest bedrooms and a game room, much as in the framing end walls of the Aluminum House. Though the repetitive patterns of the design may bring to mind the cellular composition of Mansilla & Tuñón’s MIUSAC museum in León, for example, here Silvestre breaks with the self-referential quality of such Neo-Organicist precedents to create a flexible system for integrating the large program in the landscape.

Despite obvious differences, Silvestre’s designs for interiors and large programs explore many of the same spatial values we have observed in his domestic work. The curving Wind Tower, for example, with its cuts and folds, seems entirely uncharacteristic, but its plan parti arises from the triangular shapes of intersecting arcs of the House of Seven Gardens, in this case extruded upwards. Silvestre’s stone table base for the Petra Atelier of Stone is another variation on the theme. Andrés Alfaro, the son of the Valencian artist Andreu Alfaro, is Silvestre’s close collaborator, and perhaps the series of Alfaro’s sculptures composed of repeated arcs in tubular steel have had an impact here.

While Fran Silvestre uses these broken arcs as expansive shapes, he has also experimented with closed ovoids and circles, as in the Balint House, the circular meeting room of the Petra showroom and the donut or drum-shaped volume of the MDK Factory, as we shall see below. While the solid elliptical disc of the Balint House is cut away for light and access, in these last two examples, the closed forms represent the maximum geometric expression of spatial interiority and continuity, with seamless walls offering no spatial orientation and no obvious point of contact with the exterior, complete in themselves. They are, in a way, the antithesis of the open flowing living spaces and endless glass facades of the houses. But at the same time, the circular interiors of the MDK drum are a kind of endless space in their own right.

These closed circular forms may be related in part to Silvestre’s commercial interiors, where he has often worked with virtually windowless spaces. The Vegamar wine bar and store, like the Petra showroom, features a deep and narrow entry passage that culminates in a wider space at the back where much of the activity is concentrated. The designs draw visitors into these back rooms and seek to enlarge and lighten them. (Another project, the ARV offices, offers a variation, in which changing planes of color and a web of ceiling lights mark the deepest part of the irregular space as a point of arrival).

At Vegamar, continuous strip lighting at different heights on the walls of the access corridor converge towards the back, lengthening and dramatizing its perspectival depth. They come to focus on the backlit luminous membrane of
the dining and wine tasting area, where Silvestre develops the cross-axis to help make the space feel self-sustaining and centered. In the Petra Showroom, this interior space of arrival is more static and centered. The large, high, skylit room is occupied by the mysterious circular form of the small meeting room in its center, Silvestre’s “Stonehenge”, as he calls it, which, like the rest of the showroom, it is lined with doors concealing stone samples around its exterior.
Here the solid circular volume contrasts with the ample open space around it,
in a kind of counterpoint that is not so different from the play of solids and voids in many of the houses. We can look back, for example, to the opaque prism of the bedroom floor atop the House of Silence, the back wall of the living space
in the House of Breeze and others, or the closed volume of the bedrooms in the Atrium and Hofmann houses. These service and private spaces all function in the composition as solid forms in contrast to the open, glazed living areas.

This dialogue of solid and void reappears in the project for the Auditorium in Alfafar, where half of the enormous rectangular building is cantilevered one story off the ground, hovering over an open-air entry space and the glazed lobby beyond it. The space above the cantilever contains the skylit expiation hall, while the auditorium rises beside it, with the seating and stage sloping below grade in order to maintain the contained, prismatic volume of the whole. Here the play of solids and voids arises from eroding an otherwise perfect prism. This subtractive sculptural process is repeated in the project for the Hotel Arcadia, with deep slits of different heights that wrap around the volume in horizontal bands.

The MDK Factory would at first appear to be a dialogue between two contrasting solids, with the circular drum raised over a solid square base. The walls of the drum are finished in a translucent membrane which will admit natural light while reading as a continuous, closed surface. Gentle arcs lift the drum off the roof of the square base, a rhythmic spacing that is unusual in Silvestre’s work, and that draws our attention to these virtual voids, appearing and disappearing that separate the base and the drum, and that seem to set the drum itself into rotary motion.

After studying in Valencia, Silvestre worked for Álvaro Siza, particularly on a large house in Mallorca. But like Eduardo Souto de Moura, he avoids anything that might resemble Siza’s highly eccentric and personal vocabulary, though his work shares with Portuguese master’s the unspoken conviction that architecture remains essentially a Modernist idiom. Silvestre’s work belongs more to a new, emerging generation of architects, together with figures such as Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga in Barcelona or José María Sánchez García in Madrid. The work of all these studios stands out for its geometric clarity and forcefulness.
Yet Silvestre’s designs are at the same time very different from these contemporaries. A certain air of monumental heaviness can invades Barozzi Veiga’s projects, while García Sánchez relishes rough textures and rude materials such as galvanized steel. In contrast, Silvestre’s structural daring, his floating planes and sheer walls of glass, and his insistent sublimation of materiality into surface and line, give his designs a quality of effortless weightlessness that is almost futuristic.

The rather Minimalist forms of these studios may have affinities as well to certain Swiss architects, as represented by Peter Zumthor, and to the influential example of Alberto Campo Baeza in Madrid. But Fran Silvestre is not an essentialist, in search of some lost, rooted authenticity, nor do we find him tuning in to the divine harmonies of perfect geometric form under the light. His art, for all its abstraction, is more about the problem at hand, and how to create a setting
for daily life that lifts us out of the ordinary, and towards a more complete and awakened sensual engagement with our surroundings.