August 1, 2018

A 200-Year-Old Olive Tree Becomes the Focal Point of a Guesthouse in Spain

When is the best room in the house not actually a room? When it’s devoted to a 200-year-old olive tree. Taller Básico de Arquitectura directors Javier Pérez Herreras and Javier Quintana de Uña made an outdoor room the focal point for a guesthouse in Navarra, Spain, by enclosing 690 square feet of garden, surrounding the tree, in white-lacquered steel rods placed at 4-inch intervals. At one end of the space, the rods rise to screen the front of the guesthouse proper, then bend to follow its pitched roof. “Dissolving the structure’s presence,” Pérez explains. At the opposite end is the main house, which the architects completed 15 years ago.

Photography by Pedro Pegenaute.
Photography by Pedro Pegenaute.
Photography by Pedro Pegenaute.

> See more from the March 2016 issue of Interior Design

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