Casa Szoke by Aranguren + Gallegos, photo ©Jesús Granada
Casa Szoke is the 'silent' main character of 'The Room Next Door', Pedro Almodovar's film that won the Golden Lion at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
The Room Next Door - Official Trailer - Warner Bros. UK & Ireland
Designed by Madrid-based studio Aranguren + Gallegos, Casa Szoke is located on the southern slopes of Mount Abantos in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, a small town near Madrid.
The architects aimed to integrate the house into the surrounding natural environment, making the most of its features: to the south-west, the Bosque de La Herrería, and to the east, the Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, a 16th-century monastery and royal palace that has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984.
To achieve the project's objective, the house is divided into a series of small interconnected volumes that fit into the rather steep terrain, resulting in a small-scale object that blends into the land, especially in the upper part of the plot. The texture and colour of the house, made of rusted Corten steel, blend in with the erosion-darkened granite and the reddish tones of the pine trees.
The different levels of the interior open up the house to the landscape and its magnificent views through large openings to find the best orientation for the long winter in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, ensuring that the last ray of sunshine of the shortest day of the year falls on the façade. The house also faces northeast, with a large portico overlooking the domes of the monastery, open on two sides to take advantage of the cool breezes from the pine forest.
The Archilovers editorial team asked the studio Aranguren + Gallegos to understand how the architects' design choices influenced director Almodovar's decision to turn the house into a film set.
The Szoke House has a strong connection with the surrounding landscape. How did you translate this visual and material connection into the architectural narrative of the project, and what were the biggest challenges in harmonizing the building with the natural environment of Monte Abantos?
The site of the house is a slope with a double slant on the east-west axis. The forest that borders it to the north was an argument for us to design the house as a sequence of volumes that start from the forest and spill out onto the slope on which it sits, dissolving the total volume of the house into a sum of independent volumes that are only connected from the interior to facilitate their integration into the landscape.
The house ranges from a single height of the first volume, next to the forest, to two heights at the southern end, where the architecture is more expressive in front of the water surface of the swimming pool.
Each volume of the house functions as a space with a double-glazed front and two different opening scales, a consequence of the sloping plane of the roof. The garden and the woods are always in relation to the interior in a continuous vision through the large panes of glass.
The project was chosen by Pedro Almodóvar as the set for his latest film, which won the Golden Lion in Venice. How do you think the architecture of the Szoke House contributed to creating the cinematic atmosphere Almodóvar sought for the film? Did you collaborate with the production to adapt certain spaces?
Almodovar is a great film director, as we all know, but we were also surprised by his sensitivity to our architecture's spatial intentions and intuitions. The dual and intimate relationship of the two protagonists, with dramatic situations and almost a splitting and merging of personalities and emotions, is masterfully treated by Pedro Almodovar through the double reflections created in the windows of the house's rooms. Nature and intimacy merge with a solid dramatic charge.
The choice of materials, such as corten steel, which blends with the warm tones of the forest and stone, was central to the integration with the surroundings. How did this material influence the perception of the interior and exterior spaces of the house, especially during the film's shooting?
The decision to clad the entire exterior of the house in Corten steel reinforces the intention to merge the architecture with its surroundings, made up of slender pine trees whose trunks are the same colour as the rusty steel.
On the other hand, the interior takes on a warm tone, where the oak-clad walls continue to speak of the forest, but in an abstract way, where the trunks have become planes forming the walls. The external and internal worlds merge and are linked by a thin plane or glass filter that brings them closer and reflects them.
The project shows a strong commitment to solar orientation and interaction with the local winds. How did these sustainability aspects influence not only the living experience but also the atmosphere of the film shot within the house? Do you think these solutions added a unique touch to the final result?
We believe that the house has been able to accompany and complement Pedro Almodóvar's intentions and choices. Architecture makes sense when it welcomes and enriches the person who lives in it. Let's say it was perhaps the framework that frames the real protagonist, the work of art, the film, to which it is the backdrop.
We believe the house has accompanied and complemented Pedro Almodóvar's intentions and choices. Architecture makes sense when it welcomes and enriches the person who lives in it. Let's say that perhaps it was the frame that bounded the real protagonist, which is the work of art, the film it serves.
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