Founded in 2004 by Sebastián Machado, the Mano Arquitectura studio has been projecting buildings for 20 years in a careful and detailed manner, with a clear influence from the location in which they are situated and the people who inhabit them.
Their team consists of professionals from various disciplines who share a love and passion for well-crafted and enduring things. Urban planning, landscaping, architecture, engineering, interior, and furniture design are seamlessly integrated into each project to express timeless ideas that draw from the past but look toward the future. The studio has a clear premise: buildings must integrate into the landscape subtly, as they are aware that every stone placed carries responsibility, and humans need all their senses to connect with nature.
Pleta Arriu embodies all these values, creating unique spaces that seamlessly blend into the landscape of Baqueira Beret. Pleta Arriu is the latest project from the studio, located in one of the most privileged areas of the Pyrenees, at the foot of the slopes, embracing the concept of a snow retreat.
The homes nestle on the mountain, with many of the houses integrated into the landscape, forming terraces, making them appear smaller, moving away from an ostentatious idea and approaching a perfect communion with the surrounding nature. It is an ongoing project, although the first phase has already concluded with the delivery of 14 houses. Avintia, from Grupo Avintia Real Estate, has been the promoter and builder of Pleta Arriu, while Lantana has handled the marketing of the homes.
Carefully designed with noble materials, the 38 homes that make up Pleta Arriu, arranged on a total area of 14,000 m², include extraordinary amenities such as a ski room, water area, and home cinema to provide an exceptional skiing experience. They are designed as habitable homes for rest and enjoyment, a perfect meeting point for the family, a warm place to return, reunite, and gather year after year. Mano Arquitectura has created this project from scratch, from urbanization to landscaping, without neglecting, as it could not be otherwise, architecture and interior design.
There are three different types of homes in Pleta Arriu (360 m²; 450 m²; 530 m²), where views and natural light take center stage in each room.
The layout of the house is designed as an experience from shadow and spatial restraint towards the light and exuberance of an eight-meter-high space and the mountain panorama that leaves you absorbed in the landscape, specifies Sebastián Machado.
As you ascend, double-height spaces, sloping ceilings, and large windows appear, turning living in this house into a stunning sensory experience.
The materials, local natural slate in gray tones, and natural wood act as witnesses to the sun, wind, rain, heat, and cold. They blend into the environment and reveal the passage of time with their marks of wear, veins, rust, scratches, knots, porosity, color, and shine.
The main inspiration when designing the houses was the Aranese architecture with its noble materials, such as stone for the facade, ash for the exterior wood, or oak for the interior, being a lighter wood that provides a greater sense of warmth, an interior design by Craft, alongside Camila Acosta.
Pleta Arriu is one of the most ambitious projects of Mano Arquitectura. The greatest challenge was to take traditional mountain houses, so a very detailed study of the recurring elements of the environment had to be carried out and give them new life.
Beyond the aesthetic and architectural challenge, this project is challenging in all its technical aspects, as the urbanization stands on a 45-degree slope and complex geology that required creating both house and street retentions, resulting in a difficult and slow execution.
The resulting slopes in the roads had to be solved with a heating system to prevent the formation of ice on the coldest days. With the idea of integrating the project as much as possible, the new slopes were resolved with reinforced earth to maximize the green and draining areas of the urbanization.
Thus, Pleta Arriu stems from the idea of creating a space that welcomes and shelters in an exceptional setting, overcoming the vicissitudes of the mountain to create a home in the midst of nature. A project that is ready to inhabit and complete because no urban plan is finished until a person makes it their own.
