Lanzarote — where nature meets design - By Helen Ochyra

Away from resorts, the island is an oasis of cool design, and it’s all thanks to Cesar Manrique

Michael Palin has a lot to answer for. That is what I think as I sit beneath a giant eucalyptus tree on the terrace of Bodegas Rubicon winery, sipping a crisp glass of local white, eyes wandering across a 360-degree monochrome landscape.

Looking at the miles of ebony soil interrupted only by half-moon drystone walls to protect the vines, marching from volcano to volcano, and powder-white bodegas, I fail to see how Palin once dubbed this gorgeous island “Lanzagrotty”.

Lanzarote is without doubt the chicest of the Canary Islands and its protection from the rampant tourist development that has blighted parts of some of its neighbours is largely down to one man.

César Manrique was born in the island capital of Arrecife one hundred years ago this April. He was an artist, an architect, an imaginative designer, and a passionate advocate of the aesthetic. It is down to Manrique that Lanzarote has laws against advertising hoardings, high-rise buildings and even against painting your house any colour besides white.

Human intervention in the landscape is so often negative, but here on Lanzarote every house is as low-rise and as pale as a sugar cube, and the contrast between their white and nature’s black is what makes Lanzarote feel chic. Because monochrome is always chic.

It is only interrupted here by the paintwork around the doors and windows: in the island’s interior a dark green, on the coast an azure blue. That was another rule put in place by Manrique.

Manrique did not just tell people what they could not do, however, he also created many of the island’s top attractions. First port of call on my Manrique trail is his Jardin de Cactus (Cactus Garden), sculpted from the bowels of a disused quarry in 1990.

Here I step into a world where plants rule. Taller by far than the humans strolling around them, the cacti tower above the black lava pathways, creating a maze that has no centre. Some of the plants appear as wild and untamed as an alien species bent on overtaking the landscape; others stand in geometric formation, as perfectly put together as a work of art.

The garden is an easy stop-off en route north, to the site that was Manrique’s first masterpiece, the Jameos del Agua. This lava tube turned restaurant and concert venue was formed in fire and fury, by the eruption of La Corona volcano some 4,000 years ago and the subsequent lava flow into the Atlantic.

Nature may have provided the canvas, but in the 1960s it was Manrique who sculpted this dramatic landscape into something truly beautiful.

Entering the tube, I descend a flight of lava steps and find myself in a restaurant unlike any other. Chunky wooden chairs tempt me to sit and order coffee, my eyes drawn from the domed dark lava ceiling to the brilliant white of the curved bar. Monochrome once again. Above my head a huge plant, hanging like a chandelier, drips slowly from the earlier rain, and below me and farther along the lava tube a pool of water reflects the sun and an image of it all.

The highlight here, though, is the auditorium and I return by night to listen to live music, the bass reverberating in waves around the curve of lava at the tube’s farthest end. Dozens of us sit in awed silence as those on stage fill nature’s cavern with piano and violin and French horn; humans once again enhancing nature.

The next day I return to the island’s north, keen to check out a bar that in pictures appears to be every inch the James Bond lair. Manrique built the Mirador del Rio to make the most of the view across the water of Lanzarote’s neighbour La Graciosa.

This car-free near-desert island is a haven for hikers and cyclists, but it is best seen from above, atop the cliffs of the Risco de Famara — and with gin and tonic in hand. Here I get lucky and nab a window seat, staring straight out through circular windows carved out of Manrique’s signature white walls. It is on my way upstairs to the exterior balcony, however, that I find my favourite viewpoint, a small oval-shaped window that perfectly captures the collapsed pyramid of La Corona, epicentre of so much destruction, now tamed by Manrique to fit within a frame.

Close to the Jameos and the Mirador is the house in which Manrique was living when he died. It is here that I really start to understand the impact that he had on the island he loved, because everything in the Casa Museo César Manrique is perfectly designed.

There are so many places I want to sit — by the pool on chairs as spherical and orange as a tangerine, in the living room on squishy sofas that face the lava-built fireplace, and certainly in Manrique’s sunken bathtub, surrounded by windows that look out on to dark volcanic rock and burgeoning emerald plantlife.

After poking around his home I begin to see Manrique’s influence everywhere — especially in my accommodation. I may not be allowed to sit next to Manrique’s pool, but at Finca Malvasia I have the run of the place. Here there are five self catering apartments arranged round a pool that is just as sculptural and inviting as those I have seen in Manrique’s designs.

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