House upon House, designed by Diego Abellán and Inma Jiménez of ABEZ, is a project that reimagines a demolished home in southern Alicante, creating a new structure that engages with its past.
Located at the intersection of urbanization and nature, the house balances memory and modernity, shaping a dialogue between built form and landscape. Two volumes define the project, each establishing a distinct relationship with its surroundings. The lower volume, grounded and open, dissolves into the garden. Screens of lattice filter the light, framing the landscape in shifting compositions while preserving a sense of enclosure. The walls do not separate but modulate, creating a threshold between the domestic and the exterior. Here, the Mediterranean way of living—fluid, porous, inseparable from the outdoors—finds its expression.
Above, the second volume rests with a measured stillness. It is here that the house gathers itself, retreating from exposure. The kitchen, dining, and living spaces unfold uninterrupted, expanding towards the horizon through sliding glass doors that extend the view to the distant mountains. The bedrooms, aligned in quiet progression, withdraw into the background. Unlike the ground floor’s outward gaze, these spaces turn inward, their windows framing the ‘sierra’ with intent, defining the landscape as much as it defines them.
In House upon House, architecture becomes an act of mediation. Between weight and lightness, between what is enclosed and what is left open, the house does not claim the land but responds to it. It is not an object placed in space, but a conversation with it—an echo of what was, and an invitation to what will be.
