My House: The Live-In Studio of Lanzarote’s Best Known Artist Is Embedded Into Lava Rock

Ildefonso Aguilar’s house is decidedly not "traditional" Lanzarote. That is, not one of the blocky, white-washed buildings with a bright green or blue door that the Canary Islands are known for. Aguilar’s home, built in 1976, carries the same reddish hue as the island’s famous Montañas del Fuego. And it is as quirky as the island’s distinctive windmill art.

The mountains and windmill sculptures are both the result of profound forces of nature that shaped Lanzarote, and ultimately, Aguilar’s home: first, the volcanic eruption of 1730 that lasted six years and buried the island in lava and ash, and second, César Manrique, the postmodern artist who created a persona for the island in the ’60s, and then fought to protect it from overdevelopment. Now, three hundred years after the eruption, the island still looks like a scene from The Martian, and 30 years after Manrique’s death, his artistic style and eco-friendly mandates still rule.

Aguilar has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Canary Islands and called Manrique’s "spiritual successor" as he's also an artist-advocate. But in contrast with Manrique’s art, which celebrated bold and colorful elements, artifice alongside nature, Aguilar’s work hums with quiet contemplation, exploring the island’s natural elements with philosophical realism.

Like his art, Aguilar’s home, dubbed La Ameba, incorporates the island into its design. Its living spaces burrow beneath the volcanic rock, and its external structure elevates the lava onto its surfaces so that rock and house meld into something that is part art, part landscape. While Aguilar’s photographs and music are atmospheric and ruminative, capturing the island’s unspoiled landscape and some of its desolation, the house has a whimsical quality. The asymmetry, the color, the childish shape of the palms and exterior lamps invite play and creativity—the perfect house for an artist.