Casa Estrato

The name is literal. Casa Estrato is built in layers, and it reads that way from the moment you arrive: a media room below grade, the open living floor at ground level, and the private quarters above. Each stratum has its own light, its own degree of enclosure, its own relationship to the garden. The section, not the plan, is what organises this house.

The materials stack the same way. Polished concrete underfoot, exposed concrete walls, rammed earth, and natural chukum plaster — four surfaces that belong to the same family and age at the same rate, laid one over another like geological bands. Engineered wood on the upper floor, rosewood joinery and solid rosewood bedroom doors, Bamboo X-treme decking on the terraces and the outdoor shower. Nothing here is a veneer over something cheaper.

The main floor holds an open kitchen, living and dining space around a modern fireplace, opening to the rear garden and the protected green belt beyond. The kitchen runs Smeg appliances, Dekton Kelya counters, a quartz sink and integrated refrigeration. The principal suite carries a black granite double vanity in leather finish, twin dressing rooms and a private terrace shower. Beyond the four en-suite bedrooms: a study, a television room, a wine cellar and staff quarters.

A greywater system collects from showers, basins and laundry into a ten-thousand-litre cistern used exclusively for garden irrigation, with grease traps and a sealed connection to the community drainage. In Valle de Los Senderos — a gated regenerative development minutes from the UNESCO-listed historic centre — that infrastructure is not a feature. It is the premise.