A recer d’un xibiu
Like a fishermen’s shelter
Son Serra de Marina, in the north of the island, was formerly only inhabited by the families of fishermen who would go out every morning to fish in their tiny llaüts. A century later, surrounded by fragrant shrubs and pine trees, the architect Pau Munar (Palma, 1985) has decided to build his house on this same land in precisely the way those old sea salts would have done it.
text César Mateu Moyà
photography Silvia Foz
At first Pau’s idea was to create a wooden hut in the style of those that exist in Norway or Denmark, countries he travelled to several times in order to imbibe the keys to their construction.
But one day he realised that he had to be faithful to the essence and history of Son Serra de Marina, the place where he planned to erect his summer home. And he thought to himself, “If some fisherfolk had wanted to build a house here one hundred years ago, what materials would they have used, and how would they have constructed it?”.
This question marked the beginning of a 65-square-metre sandstone house, an ecosystemic shelter designed “based on the materials we have found in the dune systems in the area”, reveals Pau, the founder of the architecture studio Munarq along with his cousin Rafel Munar.
One of the main objectives when planning A recer d’un xibiu (the name of the house, meaning something like “protected by a shelter”) was to respect the autochthonous vegetation like carritx (Mauritanian grass), garrigue, pine trees and shrubs. And also to critique the “craze” of using up everything down to the last square metre of building land that is apparent in other similar-sized properties in the area.
By way of an example, the house has no swimming pool, unlike most of the surrounding summer homes. “The entire philosophy of our home revolves around how fishermen would have made it, and they would never understand why you would build a pool when the sea is one hundred meters away”.
The house makes the most of all of the possible spaces without fanfare or unnecessary objects. By employing passive solutions, they have found a way to dispense with the need for devices such as air conditioning. “It’s designed to have cross-ventilation, which means we have positioned the house and the openings in such a way that in summer the breeze known as s’Embat (characteristic of Mallorca) can enter and keep it cool. We make the most of the resources available while damaging the environment as little as possible”, says Pau.
Although dreaming of a construction that is one hundred percent ecological “is impossible in today’s world, because there is always waste, destruction and transformation involved”, Pau Munar has used local materials like marés (sandstone) from a factory in the village of Petra, recycled cotton as an insulation material, and pine shutters which need no varnish or chemical treatments.
When attempting to be more aware of the change buildings give rise to nowadays, one good rule of thumb is [...]
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