A Unique Life Discovered Within Geometric Parameters: MN House

SPACE April 2026 (No. 701) 

Kim Bokyoung (Kim): One of the most striking aspects of HORMA’s work is the way you organise your plans based on geometric forms. Even HORMA’s logo, composed of geometric shapes, seems to encapsulate the consistency of this formal attitude. Why do you adopt geometric figures as a primary design element in your work?

Nacho Juan, Clara Cantó, Jose Iborra (HORMA): We work with geometry because we find it to be the tool that best helps us express our thoughts through its precision, flexibility, and character. Geometric combinations establish a system of precise and concrete relations, where metric decisions become essential. These relations, in addition to being precise, form part of a flexible system, capable of being modified to adapt to the needs of each project. Thus, in each project, geometry proposes a different solution, of a different scale and function in space, always in dialogue with the pre-existing situation. We can explore many of our projects, and geometry is always there to express a way of working, from the conceptual drawing to the arrangement of the materials that build the project. It is not about geometries applied to a plan or a section, but to a global conception of three-dimensional space. This methodology based on geometry lends a unique character to spaces, relying on classical principles of architecture and mathematics. We often explain that our projects aim to inhabit geometry.

Kim: In MN House, you adopted the rhombus as a geometric element while simultaneously establishing the void as a central design strategy. How did you seek to organise form and space through the emptiness of the void and the precision of geometry?

HORMA: More than a rhombus, we understand the working figure in the space to be a square rotated 45 degrees with respect to the axes of the work area. We are interested in the spatiality generated by a figure when it rotates 45 degrees around the directions of its context. If it doesn’t rotate, the spaces remain parallel and of constant dimension. When it rotates around its envelope, the relationships become unbalanced, creating spaces where it approaches its perimeter and spaces where it moves away from it. Furthermore, this rotation introduces the diagonal direction as a strategy for sliding and discovery, changing the usual rules of space. In this way, we can recognise the square as a basic, recognisable geometric form, but positioned differently; we don’t approach its sides but its edges. With one side we can stop or we can pass through it; the edge leads us to slide along it...