Great Dreams of Space

Is there an Acro­polis in Spain, too, or has a spaceship landed here? When I first saw the picture of the Spr­on­ken­House, I wasn’t sure if this was a house or a work of art.
53 con­crete pillars, placed see­mingly at random in the land­scape, with frameless win­dow­panes in between that spec­ta­cu­larly break the sepa­ration between inside and out. At night, the resi­dential sculpture glows and – seen from a distance – is remi­niscent of a campfire. The image (© Joan Guillamat) has burned itself into my memory.
The house of the Dutch artist and sculptor Xander Spr­onken appears to be in the middle of nowhere, sur­rounded by orange and almond trees. It is modelled like a sculpture, standing rough and archaic in the land­scape. As lavishly as space is used, so is the choice of mate­rials reduced.

Actually, I don’t need that much space on holiday and I’m also a little worried that I won’t want to leave the house. You find yourself prac­ti­cally right in the middle of the coun­tryside, in the Spanish pro­vince of Cas­tellón. The region north of Valencia was never on my bucket list, but now I dream of water­falls, hot springs and the Medi­ter­ranean, of medieval vil­lages, small wineries and the 1813 m high Pen­ya­golosa, which I want to climb. And of the sunset on the terrace of Spr­on­kenHaus. That will be really great.

– Anke Frey, free­lance copy­writer at HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE

Much of HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE’s work involves dealing with visual material. Some­times there is a picture that par­ti­cu­larly appeals to us – a photo that sur­prises us, fasci­nates us, or simply forces us to pay even more attention to a house or look at it from a dif­ferent per­spective. You can find this in our new series “One Picture”.

The house