Farm kitchen in Extremadura
- Project ÁBATON
- Photographs by Belén Imaz
Where the kitchen stands today there was a stable. At the Finca in Extremadura, sheltered by the Sierra de Gredos, we restored that stone building keeping its volume and its walls, and in the great central space we set the living room and the kitchen, sharing a pitched roof and a fireplace. The kitchen thus inherited the best of the building: the height, the thickness of the walls and the old stone doorway with wooden shutters, which is still one of its entrances.
Inside, our intervention is minimal and precise. We replaced the load-bearing walls with slender steel columns, and that allowed a long, white, continuous island that runs through the space like a work table for many. Beside it, a long built-in table with wooden chairs and a stone-and-wood counter with rush seats, against the exposed masonry. Three places to sit, one behind the other: a kitchen designed for large gatherings, those of a country house where one cooks for everyone.
The palette is of few materials and none in disguise: the existing stone, iron, cement, wood, and panelled furniture in neutral tones, built into the walls so as not to compete with them. The pendant lights, aligned above the island, mark the length of the space without adding noise.
The space opens from north to south: from the island one sees the valley on one side and the woods on the other, framed in an opening in the façade. In summer, the fountain in the courtyard, where water springs from the rock, cools the air that comes in. The house had no electricity or running water; today it runs on solar panels and two turbines in the estate’s streams. To cook here is to cook with the energy of the place.
