GC Studio is undoubtedly one of the architecture and interior design firms with more tradition and good reputation and behind this company there are two people that I had the pleasure to meet while having a coffee at La Canasta de la Alameda in Marbella and, subsequently, I visited his office, which integrates a great team of professionals. They are Alexis González and Lucía Casaus, who twenty years ago joined their professional lives to develop their shared passion for interior design and architecture.
From those early days when Lucía was studying interior design and Alexis, architecture, and after their coincidence on a plane bound for Seville, the idea was born to create a studio that would allow them to take beauty, creativity and exclusivity to the maximum extreme, for high-level clients, with a great economic capacity, but, above all, demanding to the smallest detail.
Villa en California
And so it was that from a first idea came a shared future that has taken them very far and has put them in the sights of the most international and sophisticated customers.
Let’s remember the recent experiences and then go back to the beginnings. You have built one of the most expensive villas in Belgium. How did this assignment come to your studio and what was the result of using your services?
The villa-house you mentioned, Villa Bercuit, is still being designed, it is a very complex project for which we have needed a long time of study, but we hope that it will bring into life very soon. The client, like many others, are people to whom we have done projects in Marbella and thanks to the bond that is forged in the realization of their local residences and the satisfaction they have had with our work, they propose us to carry out their projects abroad, as many of them have homes in different parts of the world.
Villa Bercuit
Villa Bercuit
Villa Bercuit
And now we go back to your beginnings. What do you remember from that time and what has been the transformation of your way of working and your evolution over time?
Beginnings are always exciting as well as demanding. When the studio started, our clients had no references about our work, only information about our past and individual expertise, as well as about our future purpose of combining architecture and interior design under the same creative vision to give life to unique, evocative, and meaningful homes for them. Fortunately, the projects were happening and developing. When that purpose materializes and you create a villa-house of these characteristics and deliver it to the client, your business vision becomes fully conscious and that is the best reference for future clients.
Villa en California
Villa en California
Let’s talk about houses and clients. What has been the most interesting experience and what has been the most stressful?
In fact, all our projects have had both ingredients. We can’t remember any project that we found less interesting as we can’t remember one less stressful during its development either. We always say that our best project is the next one, the future one which helps us to take steps forward in innovation and creativity. Of course, this progress is only possible thanks to our clients, more and more daring, more and more demanding, each time looking for a more differential distinction. We have developed very complicated villa refurbishments with very tight deadlines and projects from scratch where it was very complicated to follow the ambitions of our clients, we have succeeded in both cases. We would say that the most interesting (and stressful) project has not been, but it will be the one that always takes us a step further.
Villa Marbella Club
The combination of interior designer and architect is a good synergy, but sometimes there can be certain discrepancies. How have you adapted to work so closely together?
Recently we mentioned, in another interview, that you can’t design a pair of shoes without thinking about the box that will contain them. Well, in our case, our vision, the reason why GC Studio was born, is precisely that; to be able to create balancing two necessary disciplines. Ours is the same discourse and we apply it in our day to day. We do not try to condition each other, but to complement each other, if one of the parties proposes something that the other cannot complete, we do not do it. We only believe in a project if it allows us to provide quality and distinction from a double scope.
Villa Olympus
Villa Olympus
Villa Olympus
Villa Olympus
In my opinion, the value of an interior designer and an architect goes beyond their professional function. You are like magicians since you have a magic wand capable of transforming large villas, beautiful houses without soul, into luxurious homes, full of life and emotions. What do you think?
We don’t have magic wands, ours is a very physics-based territory, but it is true that there seems to be a certain «magic» when all that rational knowledge transforms a space and gives it a meaning that it didn’t seem to have before. What is it that motivates that change? The way in which we explore and analyze our clients to extract their emotions and capture them in a house of this format. A house is the most private territory of each person, and as such, to be designed in consideration we have to «dive» into the lives of our clients. This is essential for the result to be real, authentic and our own.
We are not magicians, but we are psychoanalysts.
Villa Tulum
Villa Tulum
Villa Tulum
Villa Tulum
Villa Tulum
I would like to know where your inspiration comes from to make the set of everything that this house needs and the materials you use. Do you suggest to the client or the client always decides what he wants?
As we say, a home is an intimate and private territory. Our mission is to create the best home for our clients, and when we’re talking about million-dollar budgets, fulfilling that mission can’t be a middle-of-the-road option.
No two clients are alike and, therefore, neither are our homes. We love it when we are allowed freedom to suggest and codify what that client’s vision is like to our own creative vision, but we also really enjoy those cases where the client is very clear about things and the challenge is in making that very own particular vision a reality. In either case, the result must be the best.
Villa Sierra Blanca
Finally, what are your medium and long term plans and what have you not done yet that you would love to do?
The future is quite exciting fortunately! We are currently hands on some villas in Costa del Sol that will reposition themselves as the most expensive and exclusive residences in the region, all of them are going to be very unique projects.
We are also involved in a completely different project that will take us to give a new life to one of the most emblematic restaurants on the Costa del Sol.
Many projects that will take us to international destinations we have never been to before and that will surely bring us a lot of learning, new ways of understanding our profession and opportunities in the future.