Fernando Higueras - Rascainfierno (Hellscraper)

Fernando Higueras - Rascainfierno, Madrid, 1975-77- all images via  Fernando Higueras Foundation (click here to be directed)

Rascainfierno - "Hellscraper ", is the late Architect Fernando Higueras's Madrid residence that is entirely underground! The house was started in 1972 and would become his home and studio until his death in 2008.

Higueras graduated as an architect at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid in 1959, where he characterized his work distanciandose of rationalism and he closely followed the ideology of Frank Lloyd Wright. Thus his architecture promotes harmony between human habitat and its natural surroundings, respecting the natural environment.

 "This idea saved my life thirty-odd years ago, when my friend Francisco Nieva read my tarot, saw me in three years buried underground, with a cypress above me, when for 4 times in a row the death appeared in the cards. I insisted that this did not necessarily mean that I would die. Then, it occurred to me this first hellscraper (then I projected a higher one for Ground Zero in New York), I planted a cypress, 18 meters high today, and I'm still here...alive." Fernando Higueras