Villa Compostela

Villa Compostela is a single-family house in Madrid resolved in three natural marbles, each with its own job: Irish Green on the staircase wall, Nero Orobico in the main shower and Mystery White across the continuous flooring.

Irish Green is a green marble with a dark background, almost black in places, out of which emerge patches of a lighter green and very fine yellowish lines that run through it like roots. On the staircase it is opened book-matched: the two slabs are cut as mirrors and the figure forms a centred shape that climbs with the steps. It is the use that best suits a green marble with large veining — a single wall, seen head-on and in one piece.

Nero Orobico closes the house on the dark side. It is a black marble with thick, strongly marked white veining, and on the shower wall it works like a painting: over pale flooring and with water on it, that vein gains contrast instead of losing it.

Mystery White does the opposite of the other two. It is a white marble that does not cool, crossed by glazes so subtle that in the morning they are barely there and, as the afternoon falls and the light comes in from the side, shadows appear where there was nothing. Laid as continuous flooring, it is what allows the green and the black to read as exceptions rather than as a house in pieces.

Three marbles in one house are not chosen from a catalogue: they are chosen in front of the slabs and planned before cutting, so the vein lands where it should. It is the work Orion does from the block to the piece installed on site.