This faceted extension added to a holiday residence in Spain's Alicante region features plywood-lined interiors and a picture window angled to frame a view of a nearby watchtower.

The owners of the property in the town of Torre de la Horadada commissioned architect Laura Ortín's Murcia-based studio to design a two-storey extension for use by their sons and grandchildren.
The former fishing port on the Mediterranean coast is now a popular tourist destination and has undergone extensive modernisation in recent decades to cope with the increasing number of seasonal visitors.

As a consequence of the town's expansion, much of its traditional architecture has been lost and replaced with nondescript terraces like the one in which The Beach House is situated. Each property in the row has a flat roof terrace that owners are entitled to build on, with local planning guidelines only restricting the height, occupancy and boundaries of the houses.

Many of the extensions are based on the appearance of the ground-floor facades, which have also evolved over time. The result is an eclectic and unstructured mishmash of architectural styles.
Laura Ortín Arquitectura decided to take advantage of the lack of planning control to develop an aesthetically bold yet practical addition to the existing property.

"The proposal suggests a new code, a sort of aesthetic and functional disobedience which, in this specific context, is aligned with a provocative vision of a necessary breach,"...