Pepe Gascon Arquitectura Carves a White Cubic House into a Catalan Hillside

On a sloped site in Catalonia, Pepe Gascon Arquitectura has placed a stark white volume that reads almost as a geological deposit: a clean, rendered cube that rises from an exposed concrete retaining wall and settles into the terrain as though it has always been there. The Elvira y Marcos House is compact in footprint but ambitious in section, using a double-height central void as its organizing principle. From the street, you see a mute, private face. From inside, the house is almost entirely about what lies beyond its walls.

What makes the project genuinely interesting is the way the architects have treated the staircase not as circulation infrastructure but as architecture in its own right. A white steel lattice structure rises through the core of the house, dividing and connecting spaces simultaneously. It filters light, frames views, and acts as a kind of interior landscape that you see through, move through, and live alongside. It is the house's real protagonist.

A Restrained Face for the Street

The street elevation is deliberately closed. A white stucco volume sits atop a board-formed concrete base, the junction between the two materials establishing a clear boundary between infrastructure and habitation. A dark metal gate punched into the retaining wall is the only signal that this is an entrance at all. Vertical window slots on the upper volume are narrow enough to deny views in while still pulling light through the interior.

Seen from across the hillside, the house registers as a single pale object among autumn-toned trees and overgrown grasses. Pepe Gascon has resisted any temptation to articulate the facade with projections or material changes. The discipline pays off: the house feels inevitable rather than imposed, its geometry sharpened by the softness of the landscape around it.

The Stair as Spatial Engine

The white steel staircase is the clearest expression of what Pepe Gascon is after. Running from the ground floor up through the double-height void, its open grid structure creates a permeable screen between the kitchen, dining area, and the upper level. Steel flats and thin railings let light pass unobstructed, while hanging planters bring organic texture into the industrial frame. It reads less as a stair and more as a vertical garden trellis scaled to a house.

From the marble kitchen island, you look through the lattice toward the lawn outside. From the upper landing, you look down through it to the living space below. The stair makes every floor aware of every other floor. It is one of those moves that could feel gimmicky in lesser hands, but here the proportions are controlled enough that the effect is spatial richness without exhibitionism.

Ground Floor: Open, Grounded, Connected

The living and dining areas occupy a single open volume with polished concrete floors that reinforce the sense of continuity. Floor-to-ceiling glazing on the garden side dissolves the boundary between interior and landscape. The material palette is pared back: white walls, grey floors, marble on the kitchen island. Warmth comes from the views, the greenery visible through every opening, and the deliberate placement of a few well-chosen objects.

The dining table sits directly beneath the steel stair structure, benefiting from the overhead void that pulls daylight deep into what could otherwise be a dark zone. Hanging plants cascade from above, softening the geometry. It is a simple compositional trick, placing the most social space directly beneath the most vertical one, but it transforms a modest plan into something that feels generous.

Living with Light from Above

A recessed skylight over the living area introduces a different quality of light: softer, more diffuse, less directional than the side windows. The ceiling drops slightly around it, creating a shallow vault that draws the eye upward. Combined with the polished concrete floor, the effect is almost chapel-like in its restraint.

A hallway on the same level demonstrates a similar sensibility. A wall-mounted timber bench sits beneath a gently vaulted ceiling, the corridor flooded with reflected light from the concrete floor. It is a transitional space treated with the same care as the primary rooms, which is always a good sign in residential architecture.

Private Rooms: Color as Identity

Where the common spaces are white and grey, the bedrooms introduce color as a way to individualize. One room gets a pale yellow accent wall; another is painted a warm pink. These are not pastel afterthoughts. They are strong enough to register as chromatic environments, changing the way natural light behaves in each space. The yellow room reads as bright and cerebral; the pink room, with its scattered toys and floor-to-ceiling window, feels softer and more intimate.

Vertical windows in the bedrooms are deliberately narrow, framing slices of treetops and distant landscape rather than offering panoramic views. The upper landing continues this approach with a tall, slender opening that captures the horizon. Each aperture is calibrated to its specific orientation, proof that the architects thought about every wall as a potential frame.

Why This Project Matters

The Elvira y Marcos House belongs to a lineage of modest Mediterranean houses that achieve spatial complexity through sectional invention rather than plan gymnastics. The double-height void, the permeable stair, the controlled openings: none of these ideas are new, but they are deployed here with a precision and restraint that keeps the house from feeling derivative. Pepe Gascon has clearly thought about how light, structure, and landscape interact at every point in the section, and the result is a house that rewards close attention.

In a moment when residential architecture often defaults to either maximalist spectacle or self-consciously austere minimalism, this project finds a productive middle ground. It is specific to its site, legible in its organization, and quietly confident in its details. The colored bedrooms, the hanging planters, the timber bench in the hallway: these are small moves that add up to a house with genuine personality. That is harder to achieve than it looks.

Elvira y Marcos House by Pepe Gascon Arquitectura, Catalonia, Spain. Photography by Aitor Estévez.

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