15-centimetre concrete plane folds down Ibiza hillside villa

A white-concrete plane just 15 centimetres thick folds and steps down a hillside to form Bellavista 11, a minimalist villa overlooking the sea in Ibiza. That single thin slab does nearly all the structural and spatial work in the house designed by Valencia-based studio Fran Silvestre Arquitectos.

To put the number in perspective: 15 centimetres is roughly the width of a standard brick — and here it carries walls, floor plates and terraces alike.

Bellavista 11 is the first villa completed in The Roca Views, a cluster of six homes designed by the studio in Roca Lisa, on Ibiza's eastern coast. All six will share pared-back, rectilinear forms with thin white walls, which the firm describes as a contemporary take on the island's traditional white-walled buildings.

How does one plane organise an entire house?

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?'," studio founder Fran Silvestre told Dezeen.

"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," he explained.

The mechanism is straightforward once you see it. The plane steps down the slope across three low-slung volumes:

• At the top: a garage and access stair
• In the middle: a central social volume
• At the bottom: a block of five bedrooms

As the slab descends, it creates expansive roof terraces atop the lowest two volumes, then folds around 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," said Silvestre.

What role does Mediterranean tradition play?

Silvestre frames the white concrete not as a stylistic choice but as a climatic one. "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," he said.

"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."

The interiors carry the same logic. White walls, pale stone floors and timber carpentry emphasise the movement of light and shadow across surfaces through the day.

Alongside the open-plan living, dining and kitchen space sits a swimming pool, while the bedroom block overlooks a seating terrace. Both open through full-height sliding glass doors with slender frames and hidden tracks.

Where does this sit in the studio's work?

Silvestre founded his eponymous practice in 2005. The firm has repeatedly built from a single geometric gesture: a Madrid house made from a cluster of white cylindrical volumes, the stepped Villa 95 in Andalusia, and the winding Sabater House in Alicante.

With five more villas still to come at The Roca Views, Bellavista 11 now sets the formal and material template the whole development will follow.