Fran Silvestre Folds a 15-Centimetre Concrete Plane Down an Ibiza Hillside

A concrete plane just 15 centimetres thick folds down a hillside in Ibiza to form Bellavista 11, a minimalist sea-facing villa by the Valencia studio Fran Silvestre Arquitectos.

The house is the first of six villas the studio has designed for The Roca Views development in Roca Lisa, on the island's eastern coast. All six share pared-back, rectilinear forms and thin white walls. The studio presents them as a contemporary reading of Ibiza's traditional white-walled buildings.

Studio founder Fran Silvestre told Dezeen 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?'" he said.

How does one plane organise an entire house?

The plane does the work of walls, floors and terraces at once. "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 explained.

As the plane steps down the slope, it divides the villa into three low-slung volumes:

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

The stepping also creates expansive roof terraces over the lower two volumes, and folds inward to form the interior floor plates and a series of lower terraces.

"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," Silvestre said.

A swimming pool sits alongside the social volume, and the bedroom block overlooks a seating terrace. Full-height sliding glass doors with slender frames and hidden tracks open both volumes to the outdoors.

What does the white tradition mean here?

The interiors match the exterior's restraint: white walls, pale stone floors and timber carpentry, chosen to emphasise the movement of light and shadow across surfaces through the day.

"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," said Silvestre.

White, he argued, is not only a nod to the island's vernacular but a practical and atmospheric choice. "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."

Silvestre founded his eponymous practice in 2005. The studio has a record of singular geometric gestures: a Madrid house completed in a cluster of white cylindrical volumes, the stepped Villa 95 in Andalusia, and the winding Sabater House in Alicante.

With five more Roca Views villas still to come, Bellavista 11 sets the formal grammar for a development that will test whether one folded plane can become a repeatable model of Mediterranean minimalism. Photography is by Jesus Orrico.