In Almargen, a rural village in the inner province of Malaga, Crearctive studio has designed a single-family home that follows the vernacular Mediterranean style, reinterpreting it through a distinctly contemporary vocabulary.

In particular, the project is inscribed in the local tradition of compact houses with internal courtyards (for climatic reasons, aimed at enhancing internal lighting and cross ventilation), to which the studio brings a contemporary touch that can be seen in the volumetric offsets and the bright, minimalist interiors suggesting a domestic warmth that is indifferent to the superfluous.

The house is located in a built-up neighbourhood and nestled in a small-scale consolidated built fabric, set back from the road to leave the garden with swimming pool as a filter space between the exterior and interior. The two-storey L-shaped volume with its essential geometries, flat roof and immaculate surfaces echoes the vernacular, enriched by the volumetric play of the upper floor projecting out from the one below, marking the entrance and generating lively chiaroscuro variations.

Inside, the spaces unfold around two small planted patios (one at the entrance related to the staircase, and one bordering the boundary wall to the east) from which ventilation and natural light filter into the depths of the rooms. At the intersection of the two orthogonal bodies that compose the building, a double-height space surmounted by a skylight marks the living area with living room and kitchen as the beating heart of the house, an open space irradiated by light filtering through the large windows west-facing onto the garden. On the upper floor, the more private area of the house unfolds in three bedrooms, two of which have balconies.

A palette of light-coloured materials, both outside and inside, gives the building a bare but appealing character. Outside, the white plastered surfaces are interrupted by bright terracotta-coloured brushstrokes in the porcelain stoneware cladding of the window reveals and in the master bedroom terrace, echoing the colours of the surroundings. Inside, a rarefied atmosphere envelops the spaces, characterised by neutral tones on the walls, floors and fixed furnishings, which expand the dimensions of the space beyond the boundaries of the house.

With Casa SC, the chosen path is a reinterpretation of the vernacular, one that evokes it while simultaneously dematerializing it through compositional and material choices that emphasize a contemporary, minimal way of living.