UC84

Cádiz was one of the wealthiest cities in eighteenth-century Europe — the gateway port to the Americas, a place of extraordinary architectural ambition. The buildings that remain from that era carry their history in their bones: in the massive structural beams that have held up ceilings for three centuries, accumulating the grime, cracks and layers of every generation that lived beneath them.

A Málaga architecture practice commissioned this piece for a house they had built into a rocky hillside — a structure designed to disappear into the terrain it occupied. Contemporary minimalist architecture rooted entirely in respect for location and materials, mimicking the natural stone cut of the slope it sits on.

They wanted a bench. Functional, but aligned with the philosophy of the house. The answer was obvious: recovered beams from eighteenth-century buildings. What better way to honour materials than to use ones that already carry three centuries of history.

UC84 is as minimalist as it is megalithic. A single sculpted central column, deliberately off-centre to emphasise its organic nature, grows progressively into the seating surface — 180 cm of ancient tea wood, shaped and finished with precision. The terminal ends of the beams that form the seat are left raw, in their semi-decomposed state, scarred by centuries of time.

That contrast — between the worked, carefully finished surface and the honest wounds of the material's age — is what connects the piece to the house it was made for.