Casa Altea by Viruta Lab: an architecture of regulated views, where spaces separate without isolating and filter without enclosing

Driving along the Costa Blanca between Calpe and Altea, it comes as a surprise to suddenly encounter the Mascarat Canyon. Here the coastline becomes a vertical wall, a ravine and an enclosed cove, with the Morro de Toix standing as a mineral backdrop over a Mediterranean that opens up all at once. It is at this point of geographic tension —between the verticality of the rock and the horizontality of the sea— that Viruta Lab, the studio led by María Daroz and David Puerta, places Casa Altea, a summer duplex conceived less as a refuge from the landscape than as a way of inhabiting it from within.

The starting point of the project comes from a reading of the Mascarat before any design work began. Hence Casa Altea sets aside the usual nautical repertoire, with no literal blues and no maritime references, working instead from the physical experience of the place: the stratified rock, the shadow cast by the cliffs, the vibration of the sun on the limestone, the breeze that arrives already filtered. The result is an architecture that engages conceptually with the exterior immensity, developing the house as a sequence of filters between the body and the landscape.

An architecture of regulated views

This idea of the filter is, in fact, what organizes the main floor. The hall, kitchen, dining room and living room are conceived as a single continuous space that extends the gaze toward the cliff, the terrace and the horizon, so that entering the house already sets in motion a visual sequence toward the sea. But the openness is neither total nor permanent: a system of custom sliding slatted doors, built to measure by Nomi, allows this continuity to be regulated. The wooden slats can be moved to fragment the floor into as many as four almost independent zones, or drawn back to return it to a single unified space, depending on the time of day or the need for privacy. It is an architecture of regulated views, where spaces separate without isolating and filter without enclosing, in a mechanism that reproduces at domestic scale the very alternation of openings and shadows found in the Mascarat.

The slatted wood also serves a material function that goes beyond filtering light: it works as a reading of the cliff’s striations, introducing depth and rhythm into an almost geological interior skin. This logic is joined by a ceramic palette of manual, Mediterranean scale —the two-tone mosaic by Hisbalit and the green tile by Nais— that evokes light fragmented over stone, while a dark skirting runs along the base of the rooms, echoing the damp line where the cliff meets the water. Ochre, sand and honey tones, together with light woods, carry the warm limestone of the Costa Blanca into the interior, and the light curtains introduce the idea of mist and salt air, turning the exterior light into a habitable presence inside the house.

A contained atmosphere in the bedrooms

En la zona de dormitorios, situada en la parte posterior del dúplex, se invierte el gesto de apertura de la planta de día: aquí la casa se recoge en una atmósfera más contenida, alejada de la exposición directa al frente marítimo. El dormitorio principal recupera, no obstante, la relación con la orografía y se plantea como una habitación mirador desde la que despertar frente a la roca y el mar. En la planta superior, un pequeño despacho y una segunda terraza culmina la secuencia doméstica con un espacio de concentración suspendido sobre el Mediterráneo, que domina el mar desde el punto más alto de la topografía de la casa.

A sequence of filters between the body and the landscape

Architecturally, the project works with the idea of making the house a sequence of filters between the body and the landscape. The slatted wood, the sliding doors, the textiles, the ceramics and the changes in level are presented as tools for regulating light, view, privacy and the relationship with the outside. Because Casa Altea interprets the geography of the Mascarat from within. It speaks not of boats or beach, but of rock, shadow, horizon and shelter. A summer house understood as a place to pause, look and rest, between the mineral verticality of the Mascarat cliff and the infinite calm of the Mediterranean.

Materials, furniture and art

Materials. Carpentry: Nomi. Mosaics and ceramics: Wadi outdoor mosaic in Terra and Pine by Hisbalit. Costa Nova green tile in Laurel Green by Nais.

Lighting. Wall lamp for the house: Berimbau by Ferroluce. Living room pendant lamp: Tekiò Horizontal P2 by Santa & Cole. Outdoor wall lamp: Plaff-on 16 by Marset.

Interior furniture. Graphius sofa by Paolo Nessi, upholstered in Jane fabric by La Madrid with Crisp piping by Gabriel. Pouf by Paolo Nessi in Crisp fabric by Gabriel. Ramón dining chairs by Santa & Cole. Isabela headboards by Cofaneti. Deya side table by Ferm Living. Small track bench by Ferm Living. Horm stools by Casamania. Fosca stool by Blasco & Vila. Lucia dining table by Decowood. Mini mirrors by Montana. Sector desk by Brass. Walnut side table by Stigido.

Outdoor furniture. Talo outdoor table by Expormin. Hexagonal outdoor side table by Expormin. Cask outdoor sofa by Expormin. Cask outdoor armchair by Expormin. Cask outdoor lounger by Expormin. Maurina outdoor chairs by Kave Home.

Rugs. Living room and master bedroom rug: Hand Loom Goz rug in Beige by Rug Gan. Bedroom rugs: Amalfi by Naturtex.

Art and decoration. Ceramic works Kylix Obsidiana, Lebes, Arq 008, Deriva nº 25 by Canoa Lab. Work “Retrato de mi suegro Paco” by Más cara que espalda.

Project: Casa Altea.
Location; Mascarat, Altea. Alicante.
Completion: 2026.
Studio: Viruta Lab.
Architects and designers: Maria Daroz & David Puerta
Photography: David Zarzoso.
Art direction and home staging: Viruta Lab.
Source: Viruta Lab.

Viruta Lab

Founded in Valencia in 2020 by David Puerta and María Daroz, Viruta Lab grows out of two personal paths that eventually merge into a single way of designing. He arrives at architecture through drawing, after years of sketching ideas straight onto walls before learning how to build them; she arrives through classical ballet, a discipline that gives her a sense of proportion, rigour and attention to detail that she later carries into space. The studio’s own name, tied to the wood shavings left behind by manual craft, sums up that vocation: architecture understood as a craftsman’s process, made of sketch, material and time, rather than as a closed result.

The studio works across residential, contract, retail and ephemeral projects, always through active listening and close teamwork with the client. Each commission starts from a basic idea — often, quite literally, a line drawn on paper — which Viruta Lab translates into programme, material and constructive detail until it becomes a lived-in space. The firm holds emotion as architecture’s ultimate purpose: organic, warm, timeless projects designed so that whoever inhabits the space recognises something of their own in it.

That sensibility has a double root. María Daroz’s training in Denmark brings the rigour and refinement of Scandinavian design into the studio, which blends with the Mediterranean character of Valencia, the city where both partners have built their careers. The result is a language of its own, recognisable through its handling of natural light, noble materials and a warm palette that appeals to the senses, applied by the studio at the domestic scale of a home as much as on larger-scale projects.

María Daroz

María Daroz is an architect from the Universitat Politècnica de València, with a year of postgraduate training at the Arkitektskolen in Aarhus, Denmark. Before founding Viruta Lab, she coordinated the architectural projects department at Ramón Esteve Estudio, worked as an architect at DMG Arquitectura, served as Retail & Product Project Manager at CuldeSac, and led the projects department at Casas inHAUS. In 2019 she set up Viruta Lab together with David Puerta. “Dance gave me the discipline and elegance reflected in my sensitivity to detail,” she says of the link between her training and her way of designing, which combines geometric proportion with a particular attraction to light and to materials worked with sophistication.

David Puerta

David Puerta is an architect from the Universitat Politècnica de València, specialised in Heritage Intervention, and an interior designer from EASD Valencia. His career includes Studio Zone, Moncly Interioristas  and Ximo Roca Diseño, as well as heading the interior design department at Casas inHAUS before joining Viruta Lab. For him, drawing is the origin of everything else: “Architecture became a way of continuing to create, of searching for new forms and, above all, of sharing my emotions with people.” That draughtsman’s eye underpins his understanding of a project, from the first sketch to the final interior design detail.

Project by Viruta Lab