All inhabitable projects, such as the Landaburu Borda Country House, are the result of a dream and straight thinking. The developer and owner, Gorka Ibargoyen, found this centenarian country manor nestled in a forest in the Bera valley in Navarra. The building and the place seemed suitable for a holiday lodging project, for guests to disconnect from everything beyond the surrounding forest’s borders and reconnect with nature.

To make his project a reality, Gorka Ibargoyen struck up an alliance with architect Jordi Hidalgo Tané. Between the two of them, they made this concept a reality, giving birth to this country home: creating fruitful dialogue between old and new, ancestral tradition and modernity, craftsmanship and technology, to build a contemporary living space rife with the future.

The original manor, built of stone and designed to last over time, was left intact in tribute to a valuable inheritance, a construction and cultural tradition that dialogues with the new project and enriches it. The new construction, housing the day area, is joined to the old manor by means of a glass tunnel. This new volume is “hidden” under a slope covered in growing vegetation, so it does not invade the natural setting or overbear the original construction. Past and present, joined by an invisible link.

Wood is the raw material that links the house with the environment, the leafy oak forest protecting the house and endowing it with oxygen and life. At Landaburu Borda, Parklex^® products took on a star role in different indoor projects, thanks to their material quality, easy installation and resistance to moisture and intensive use. The natural oak selected to finish these products covers vertical and horizontal walls, floors and ceilings, comprises the kitchen furnishings and transforms the shower into a one-of-a-kind experience. It also imbues the interior with stylistic coherence.

Under the carefully selected natural appearance of the oak, the product’s different layers conceal a technological process that is the result of research and creativity. It makes the virtues of wood, its natural feel and warmth, compatible with technical requirements for proper installation.

Landaburu Borda is a good example of when the industry allies itself with design and architecture, reaching their shared main objective: improving the lives of people through efficiency and creativity.

The Landaburu Borda Country House has been confirmed as a finalist project in the 2020 FAD Awards. The jury has made a selection of projects defined as “attentive to context, strategy and trade, in dialogue with space, time, matter, body and nature; an architecture with a purposeful spirit, which generates systems rather than objects”.

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Photographer: José Hevia
Texts: Àngels Manzano