Las Rotas and El Tosalet are not new developments. Many of their villas were built between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, at a time when criteria for energy efficiency, interior layout and indoor-outdoor relationships were very different. Three decades on, any architect in Dénia or architect in Jávea working in these areas increasingly encounters a different kind of brief: not designing from scratch, but deciding what to keep and what to transform in a home that already has a history of its own.
What still works from the original design
Villas from this generation, in both Las Rotas and El Tosalet, share strengths that are valued more than ever today: generous plots, solid foundations built to last, and a positioning on the land that already took into account the orientation and views available at the time. In many cases, the structure and outer envelope remain perfectly usable, making a full renovation a more sensible option than demolition and rebuilding, both because of the consolidated built volume and the owner's attachment to the home.
What doesn't tend to hold up over time, however, is the interior layout. Closed-off kitchens, bedrooms sized for weekend second-home use, and a rigid separation between rooms are the aspects most frequently flagged for reconsideration in these projects.
Building services: the real bottleneck
If there's one area where the "original design" clearly falls behind, it's building services. Villas built thirty years ago in Las Rotas and El Tosalet didn't factor in demanding thermal insulation, thermal-break window frames, or the possibility of integrating efficient climate control or solar self-consumption. Updating these systems usually requires deeper intervention than owners anticipate at their first meeting: rewiring entire electrical networks, improving roof and façade insulation, or replacing original window frames that are now clearly inefficient against the Mediterranean climate.
Two areas, two different paces of transformation
Although they share a construction decade, Las Rotas and El Tosalet don't evolve at the same pace. In Las Rotas, the rocky topography and steep terrain that already shaped the original project also limit today's scope for extension, so renovations tend to focus on updating what exists rather than adding built area. In El Tosalet, with more regular plots and gentler slopes, it's more common to find extensions that add a floor or completely reorganise the relationship between the house and the garden, making use of buildable capacity that was never fully used up at the time.
What owners of established villas are asking for today
Studios such as La Quinta Fachada, experienced in both areas, agree with other Marina Alta practices that the type of brief has changed: it's no longer just about updating the style of an ageing home, but adapting it to much more intensive use, often as a primary residence or for remote work — quite different from the holiday use many of these villas were originally designed for.
This shift in use requires revisiting aspects the original project resolved with short stays in mind: acoustic insulation between floors, climate control zoned around actual daily use, or the need for an independent home office, something that wasn't part of any weekend home's brief thirty years ago.
What to check before renovating a villa of this generation
Before planning a full renovation of a thirty-year-old villa in Las Rotas or El Tosalet, it's worth commissioning a structural report to confirm the real condition of the foundations and structure, and reviewing current planning regulations, which in some cases have changed since the original home was built.
