The Spanish villa

Where the Italian villa wants a center, the Spanish house can turn a corner, step up into a tower, or keep one wing lower. That is not a failure of composition. Andalusian houses and the revival villas drawn from them were often built up over time, and the best of them still look as if a room could be added without wrecking the whole.

White or a warm off-white is the usual wall, limewash or a smooth stucco. A tower, if there is one, is a stair or a lookout, not a castle. Keep the base heavy and the openings deep. A thin wall with stuck-on arches will not survive a second look.

You often pass through a gate or a plain door and arrive outside again. The patio is the center: arcade on one or more sides, shade, water or a tree, rooms opening onto it rather than onto the street. Bedrooms can face the court and stay quiet. The main rooms borrow that shade instead of a wall of west glass.

Ask for the court early. If it is squeezed into a leftover side yard, the house has become a corridor with a view. The arcade should be deep enough to use at noon, and the arches should belong to the wall, not sit on it like trim.

The grille over a window is a reja. Balconies take a simple iron rail. Doors are wood, often dark, and heavy. At the roof, the eave is frequently left open so the rafter tails show, shaped rather than boxed into a soffit. A deep classical cornice, which suits the Italian villa, closes that eave and starts to make the house into something else.

Tile on the roof is barrel clay, red or a faded orange, low in pitch. Decorative tile, the painted sort, is better used in a panel, a stair, or a fountain than spread over every surface. A little of it reads as craft. A lot of it reads as a showroom.

A court with an arcade. Thick walls and recessed openings. An open eave and shaped tails. Iron at the glass and on the balcony. A tower only if it earns a stair. Asymmetry on purpose.

If the request is instead a matched front, a stone balustrade, and a cornice, that is the Italian villa, and it should be drawn as one. The two houses can stand on the same street. They should not be averaged.