Paco Galiñanes develops an architecture of striking beauty at Casa Vidalverde, with wild granite and a lush garden as protagonists

Near Santiago de Compostela (Galicia), Casa Vidalverde is the latest project by the Paco Galiñanes studio, a house that blends in completely with its surroundings and blends in with the vegetation. The house is located in Ames, in a low-density residential area dominated by small housing estates and detached single-family homes.

The plot on which the house is developed has a flat extension of 3,000m2, which has allowed the architect to design the 700m2 house on a single floor, with a broken geometry, to distribute the spaces, in an intertwined way, looking for the best orientation. In this way, the main volume is fragmented into several pieces with different spaces, reducing the scale of the house and facilitating its integration with the wonderful garden with swimming pool, thanks to the large windows that allow it to be enjoyed from any room.

“The owners wanted a ground floor dwelling, with the best possible orientation and in direct connection with the surroundings. For this reason, it was decided to fragment the volumetry, to reduce the scale and facilitate integration in a fluid way with the garden“, explains Paco Galiñanes.

In the architecture of great beauty, achieved by Galiñanes, the protagonist is the wild granite of its masonry walls, with the pieces joined together with a bone joint in the popular Galician tradition. These walls, finished off in white by the roofs, are broken up by large floor-to-ceiling glazed openings, with the profiles of the window frames concealed, and allow the garden to enter visually into the interior of the house, achieving a great sensation of interior-exterior continuity.

The architect designed the house centred on the pool solarium and “the main rooms are arranged around it and embrace it, directing their gaze towards it” says Galiñanes.

Another of the great achievements of the architecture developed is the design of the large porches that surround the house, designed as protection from the Galician rains in winter and as a brise-soleil, that great invention of Le Corbusier, in summer.

Large landscaping project

Undoubtedly, the most surprising aspect of this house, because it is unusual, is the landscaping project. The architect says that “The floral and tree species selected, together with the cutting and treatment of the paving, are arranged with a view to singling out each corner of the plot“, so that all the spaces surrounding the house have their own identity.

Thanks to this successful landscaping project “The house blends in completely with the vegetation of the garden. The flowering of the species and the cycles of the seasons are brought inside the house. The landscaping project helps to create a controlled natural backdrop that provides the level of intimacy and privacy that every home needs” says the architect.

Interior spaces with a life of their own

The property is divided into a day area with kitchen, dining room, living room, study and gym; and a night area with 4 bedrooms with dressing room and bathroom. The main rooms have direct access to the garden, where the selection of floral and tree species contribute to personalise every corner.

The interior spaces have been designed with warm materials such as wood, present in the flooring, woodwork and furniture. The natural light filtering through the patios gives the rooms a life of their own. The Paco Galiñanes studio has carried out the integral design of all the interior elements of the house, which contributes to give unity to the interior space, maintaining the same idea of harmony with the landscape and fluidity present throughout the project.

Project: Vidalverde House.
Architecture: Paco Galiñanes Estudio.
Architect: Paco Galiñanes.
Team of architects: Susi Méndez, Fernando López, Adrián Oubiña.
Location: Ames (A Coruña).
Finished: 2023.
Photography: Roi Alonso.

Paco Galiñanes

An architect from the School of Architecture of A Coruña, Paco Galiñanes began his first project even before graduating in 2006. Two years later, he returned to his native Cambados.

The Paco Galiñanes studio has focused on single-family homes, new builds and renovations, focusing more on quality than quantity. Nature, landscape and tradition are key points in any of his projects. Buildings such as his Casa Espedregada, his Hotel en la Costa, Casa Cerdedo or Casa Vidalverde are perfect examples of all this. It could be said that Galiñanes makes architecture to be lived.

Galiñanes confesses that one of his references is Frank Lloyd Wright, “He made everyone like his houses” he says. His projects pursue timelessness “fleeing from the trending and placing ourselves in something more peaceful and more timeless, because our projects are going to form part of the space, they are going to leave a mark and form part of a larger whole“.

For Galiñanes, interest in construction and all its processes is essential, without forgetting that “what we like is to make architecture and that the spaces we create meet the needs of those who are going to use them“.

In his projects, local materials are the protagonist. “Our architecture, traditional Galician architecture, is an architecture of stone, heavy, but it is also an architecture of wood, light. Our stone is a material that gives a lot of texture, a lot of colour, gives weight, and that is something we like. Wood, on the other hand, is something that speaks for itself. It is very attractive, and there is no one who does not like wood to a greater or lesser extent“.

Source: Paco Galiñanes Estudio y Lelien.

Project by Paco Galiñanes