Studio Walk · Fernando Caruncho

Threshold

A small door in a jasmine-covered wall marks the entrance to the studio garden. Beyond it, a path through the laurel hedge leads towards the three circles drawn in the gravel.

Threshold

A small door in a jasmine-covered wall marks the entrance to the studio garden. Beyond it, a path through the laurel hedge leads towards the three circles drawn in the gravel.

Studio Caruncho was born from a wish for a quiet retreat: a simple room devoted to thought and daydreaming, enclosed by a garden where the sound of a fountain would invite contemplation.

The first gesture was simple: two small cubes set within the garden. In time, a third was added to house the workshop for the models, so integral to the work of the studio.

Between them, circles drawn in the gravel form a meditative ritual that carries within it the spirit of this place, a return to the essence of all things.

Lower Garden

Three lime-mortar cubes rise within the garden, inspired by the wall and the witchtower of the Alhambra. Two of them mark the passage between the lower and upper gardens, reached by steps of Sierra Elvira stone.

The workshop

Inside the large cube, where the models are made, four columns like great tree trunks support the ceiling. Natural light floods the space through the skylight above.

The workshop

Inside the large cube, where the models are made, four columns like great tree trunks support the ceiling. Natural light floods the space through the skylight above.

The garden is a light box with the sky as its ceiling. When light impacts the mind, the work begins, taking form in drawings that can return to the place.

In the mock-up the place is first confronted, and the garden begins to reveal its own logic. It is the interaction between the initial vision, the sketch, and the topography; one sees what must be adapted so that everything has a meaning.

Before any intervention becomes reality, the work discovers whether it remains true.

Plotting gardens is an ancestral rite that humanity repeats over and over, born of an intimate desire to give meaning to life. In transforming a place, we seek to understand that we are part of the cosmos, no longer alone before the mystery of creation.

The place is alive, just as any element in nature, wanting to express and transform itself. Our task is to accompany this metamorphosis, preserving its original splendour.

The garden is a consequence of the place, just as architecture is a consequence of the garden.

The kiosk

At the heart of the upper garden stands the studiolo, an intimate refuge in which to withdraw into thought and surrender to reading. Beside it, a pomegranate tree opens onto the garden, where a fig tree “drinks” from the fountain overflowing onto the gravel.

Beyond the garden

From here, one gazes upon the Sierra de Guadarrama. Beneath the shade of the fig tree, countless hours have passed as light transforms the murmur of the fountain, the landscape and the sky into sweet mystery.

Beyond the garden

From here, one gazes upon the Sierra de Guadarrama. Beneath the shade of the fig tree, countless hours have passed as light transforms the murmur of the fountain, the landscape and the sky into sweet mystery.

A spatial continuum

An open walkway unites two of the cubes, while a hidden passageway links the third, allowing them to be experienced as a single, continuous place.

In the garden we recover our whole being, no longer overwhelmed by the fear and aggression of the world. What had been forgotten becomes present again.

Every garden is a living clock marking the seasons. Time in a garden always starts, seasons always return, and the year is always new. As gardeners, we are links in an immense chain of those who came before and whose legacy we love; to continue forward, we have to go back to the origins.

Our fundamental aim is to transmit a knowledge that, in producing joy, can be passed like a torch from generation to generation.

Summoning the light

As evening falls, the copper lanterns from Gardens of Light become the garden’s luminous inhabitants.

Summoning the light

As evening falls, the copper lanterns from Gardens of Light become the garden’s luminous inhabitants.