A 15-Centimetre Concrete Plane Steps Down an Ibiza Hillside

A concrete plane just 15 centimetres thick folds down a hillside to form Bellavista 11, a minimalist sea-facing villa in Roca Lisa, on Ibiza's eastern coast. Valencia-based Fran Silvestre Arquitectos designed the house. It's the first villa completed in The Roca Views, a development of six homes the studio designed for the site.

All six villas will share pared-back, rectilinear forms with thin white walls — the studio's contemporary take on the island's traditional whitewashed buildings.

How does one plane make a house?

The design began with a question. "The project begins with a very simple question, 'Can we build on this hillside by placing a single element on it?'," studio founder Fran Silvestre told Dezeen.

The answer works like this: the plane follows the slope, and each fold solves a practical problem. "The aim is to create a continuous element that follows the topography and, through its different folds, gradually finds the best conditions offered by the site," Silvestre said.

In his words, "It is an apparently very simple operation that allows many things to be resolved at once – adapting to the slope, organising the programme, orienting each room towards a different condition of the landscape and extending the architecture to generate shade."

What does the fold actually build?

Bellavista 11 splits into three low-slung volumes stepping down the site:

• at the top, a garage and access stair;
• in the middle, a social volume with open-plan living, dining and kitchen space;
• at the bottom, a block of five bedrooms.

As the 15-centimetre plane descends, it produces expansive roof terraces atop the lowest two volumes. The same plane folds inward to form the interior floor plates and a series of lower terraces. A swimming pool sits alongside the living space, and the bedroom block overlooks a seating terrace. Full-height sliding glass doors with slender frames and hidden tracks connect both to the outdoors.

Why white, and why so plain?

Silvestre frames the project as continuity, not novelty. "We like to think in terms of an evolved tradition, learning from what works in Mediterranean architecture – shade, protection from the sun, clarity of materials – and resolving it through contemporary construction techniques," he said.

The interiors stay deliberately spare: white walls, pale stone floors, timber carpentry — materials chosen to track the movement of light and shadow across surfaces through the day.

White, Silvestre argues, is both climatic and spatial. "White appears naturally because of its relationship with traditional Mediterranean architecture and because of its performance under intense solar radiation," he explained. "At the same time, it allows light to transform the spaces throughout the day. This is something that particularly interests us, we understand light almost as another material within the project."

Where this sits in the studio's work

Silvestre founded his eponymous practice in 2005. The studio has used a singular geometric gesture before — most recently for a home in Madrid, housed in a cluster of white cylindrical volumes. Its other recent projects include the stepped Villa 95 in Andalusia and the winding Sabater House in Alicante.

With Bellavista 11 finished, the five remaining Roca Views villas will test whether the studio's single-element logic can scale from one hillside house to a whole development.