About us: Samuel, Antonio José and a friendly kind of architecture
We are Samuel Sabatell and Antonio José Caja, the two architects behind Unité. Samuel is from Callosa de Segura and Antonio José from Elda; we both trained at the University of Alicante and have been doing things together for years, first in competitions and, since 2024, in our own studio. Here we tell you where we come from and how we understand this profession.
Why we're called Unité
The name comes from Le Corbusier and his Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, a housing block conceived almost as a vertical village, with its interior streets, its shops and its terrace for everyone. What we like most about that building isn't how it looks, but the idea behind it: the home is designed from the life it will hold. That's the “unity” we look for in every project, however small.
A kind architecture
More than two thousand years ago Vitruvius wrote that a building must be sound, useful and beautiful. We still think the same, with a more modern nuance: that form should come out of function. First we understand what the people who will live in the space need, how the light comes in, what the budget is and what the site allows. When all those pieces fit, beauty appears on its own, without having to force it.
That's what we call kind architecture: homes that are easy to live in, honest about their materials, that age well and where you feel at ease without quite knowing why.
Antonio José: from the drawing board to the building site
Antonio José grew up in Elda taking everything apart to see how it worked, from Lego builds to a home-made potato cannon. That curiosity has never left him. He spent almost five years at Grupo Técnico Arte, in Elda, working on detached houses, buildings, renovations and refurbishments, and then moved to Sido Madera, in Albatera, to immerse himself in timber structures: 3D modelling, cutting lists, CNC cutting and site management. Along the way, while still a student, he won the local and national award of the Pladur construction solutions competition with María Almagro and Joaquín López-Torres.
From that period comes one of the works he is proudest of: the Mediterráneo pavilion, by Manuel Bouzas, first prize at the TAC! Festival de Arquitectura Urbana 2023 in València. Two triangular timber frames around ten metres high from which hung an enormous green persiana alicantina (traditional slatted blind), in the plaza del Músico López Chavarri, right in the Carmen district. With Sido Madera, Antonio José was the technical construction manager, developed the structure in 3D and prepared the pieces for CNC cutting, and spent a week in València assembling it. As Bouzas himself put it, it was a blind that, instead of shading a window, covered an entire square.
Samuel: research to build better
Samuel is from Callosa de Segura, where our studio is today. He completed his Bachelor's degree (2022) and Master's in Architecture (2023) at the University of Alicante, both with the Outstanding Graduate Award, and with a Ministry grant he threw himself into research in the Department of Building Construction.
His subject is very local: how glazed terraces and sunspaces change the behaviour of our homes in a climate like that of the Vega Baja. He has published it in three scientific papers in 2023, in the journals Buildings y Applied Sciences, and presented it at the ICAT 2024 international conference in Galway (Ireland). One of his results says it all: well-designed glazing can cut a home's annual energy consumption by more than 58%. In terms of an ordinary house: lower bills and more comfort, just by thinking the building envelope through properly.
What we've done together
Our first joint work was «Reflejo», an installation of mirrors in the streets of Torrevieja that won second prize in the 2020 Ephemeral Architecture competition. Seeing people stop to look at themselves in something we had built was one of those things you never forget. The following year we met again at the Emporia national ephemeral architecture awards.
And now, Unité
Today we do housing projects, renovations, legalisations, certificates, expert reports and property valuations, mainly in the Vega Baja. The scale changes, but not the way we work: listen a lot, draw more and be on site. If you'd like to see it through a real case, we explain it in How we work.
Got something in mind? Write to us via the contact page and we'll talk it over calmly.
Portraits: Ginés Valverde Rubio.