Dom Arquitectura Sets a Stone-Pier House at the Top of a Costa Brava Slope to Give the Garden to the Pool

Mediterranean House sits in Montràs, a quiet inland pocket of the Costa Brava, on a south-facing plot that falls gently toward the rear. Dom Arquitectura, with Pablo Serrano Elorduy leading the architecture and Blanca Elorduy handling the interiors, made a decisive first move: push the house to the high point of the site and give everything in front of it to the pool and the garden. The result is a 735 m² home completed in 2025, built from stone, wood and glass. All of its main living spaces sit on one ground floor, and a basement takes the cars and the services.

The material palette is familiar, and so is the brief: a relaxed, light-filled house for entertaining outdoors. What deserves attention is how far the porch has been allowed to take over. Rows of rough stone piers carry deep roof slabs, and the line between room and terrace gets blurry enough that the interior starts to feel like the secondary space. Plenty of Mediterranean houses claim that kind of ease. This one builds it into its section.

Arrival: A Stone Base That Hides the Car

From the street, the house gives little away. Stone walls, a stucco band, a dark slatted garage door and a fringe of planting along the roof edge read more as garden wall than facade. The entrance pavilion follows the same restraint: stone piers, a vertical timber door and a flat roof beside an olive tree.

The driveway shows what the basement is for. Brick paving and planted terraces step down to parking, storage and plant rooms below grade, so cars never compete with the garden above. On a sloping plot, hiding the service program in the hill is the obvious move. The point is that the team committed to it fully instead of letting a garage volume leak onto the main level.

The Pier as the Main Idea

If you remember one element from this house, it will be the stone pier. The columns are stocky, irregular and set close together, and they line a long porch that works as an extra room. Lounge chairs face a gravel bed and wooded hills; a dining table with woven pendants looks toward the lawn; a woven daybed sits in the morning light across from the pool.

The rhythm matters more than any single view. Each bay frames a slightly different slice of landscape, so walking along the porch feels like moving past a set of windows without glass. On a south orientation, the deep eave the piers support also does practical work, shading the paving and the glazing behind it, though the published material gives no detail on how that was calibrated.

Rooms Without Walls: Outdoor Dining and Cooking

The covered dining terrace is where the brief turns into architecture. Exposed rafters, a long timber table and woven pendant lamps sit between stone piers, backed by a rubble wall that glows at dusk. Nearby, an outdoor kitchen counter with a black tap and high stools faces a bed of grasses.

These spaces have the same finish and the same light fittings as the interior, which is the right call. Too many houses treat the outdoor kitchen as a barbecue bolted to a patio. Here the outdoor rooms have equal standing with the indoor ones, and you can see it.

Pool, Lavender and the Terraced Garden

Pushing the house uphill pays off in front. Wide limestone steps run down to an infinity pool and a stone-columned pavilion, with lavender in the foreground lawn. At twilight the pool steps are lit, and a built-in sofa and fire pit settle into the planting along the pier line.

The landscape takes its cues from the house. Dry-stone retaining walls terrace the slope, with clipped shrubs, juniper and a tall cypress hedge. Planted roof terraces with grasses soften the top edge of the timber-slatted canopies, and stone-clad walkways run beside the deep eaves past gravel beds and olive trees. Stone is the main regional reference throughout, and repeating it in the garden walls ties the house to the ground instead of setting it down as an object.

Living Spaces That Look Outward

Inside, the open living room is organised around the view. Timber beams, a rubble stone wall and a sliding glass wall face the wooded hills, and the leather armchairs and rough timber coffee table look out toward an olive tree and the pool terrace. A courtyard with an old olive tree, a terracotta roof and a sculpture on a plinth gives the plan a quieter outdoor room away from the pool.

The living and dining areas run as one open plan, with the home office set into the same space along a wood-clad wall. The dining room's long stone-topped table sits under whitewashed beams, with sunlight striping the floor. Next door, the kitchen connects visually through a pass-through opening. Its island pairs a stone worktop with oak cabinetry, alongside white cabinets and open shelving. The pass-through is a small decision that helps a lot: the cook stays part of the room without the kitchen spilling into the dining space.

The Stair as a Lantern

The stair down to the basement is the best piece of detailing in the published material. Oak panelling lines the hall and balustrade, and a continuous strip of warm light runs hidden along the handrail. A framed window looks onto a planted terrace, so even the way to the games room and parking has a view.

The concealed handrail lighting earns its keep. It turns a service stair into a lit timber passage and makes the shift from the bright ground floor to the basement feel deliberate rather than like a trip to the garage.

Bedrooms and Baths: Oak, Stone and Skylights

The bedrooms keep the same vocabulary at a smaller scale. One has exposed timber beams, low wood panelling and a sliding glass door straight onto the lawn. Another tucks an oak headboard, a floating bedside shelf and a wall-mounted desk into a corner. A narrow bathroom under a pitched ceiling opens directly onto a bedroom desk, which tells you these suites are planned as connected sequences rather than separate rooms.

The bathrooms are where the light strategy is clearest. A floating travertine vanity with oak cabinetry sits beside a tall skylight that washes the plaster walls with daylight. A double stone basin faces a window to greenery, and a walk-in shower with twin rain heads, a lit niche and a built-in bench keeps to plain plaster. The restraint works: once stone and oak are established, the rooms don't need anything more.

Plans and Drawings

The exploded axonometric explains the house better than any single photograph. It separates roofs, walls and floor plate, and it shows a low, wing-shaped plan in which the roof slabs act as an independent layer floating over the stone. Next to it, the cantilevered stucco slabs over stone walls, with plants trailing from the terrace edge against the pine-covered hillside, show that layering as built: heavy masonry below, a thin canopy above, and the porch held in between.

Why This Project Matters

Mediterranean House is not trying to reinvent the type, and we think that is fine. Its value is in the discipline. Siting the house at the top of the slope frees the garden. Sending the cars and services below ground keeps the main level clear. And making the stone porch the main organising element lets outdoor living set the plan, where many houses settle for a large terrace on the side.

For anyone designing in a warm climate, the lesson is that the in-between space deserves the same design attention as the rooms. Dom Arquitectura gave the porch real structure, lighting, furniture and a measured rhythm of piers, and the interiors by Blanca Elorduy carry the same oak and stone indoors without breaking the thread. The house is coherent because a small number of decisions were followed through all the way.

Mediterranean House by Dom Arquitectura. Lead architect: Pablo Serrano Elorduy; interior design: Blanca Elorduy; design team: Javier García-Mussons and Rubén Olmeda Moret; general contractor: Burgos Gasull. Montràs, Costa Brava, Spain. 735 m². Completed 2025. Photography by Pol Viladoms.

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