Munarq
Simple Beauty
When Pau Munar (Palma, 1985) finished his architecture degree he thought he would never build a house, because of the economic crisis that ravaged the world between 2008 and 2012. But fortunately for him, and indeed for the people who live in his houses today, this was not the case. Houses like Ca na Pau, a very special ecological home built using a forgotten Mallorcan technique: ballast.
text Angie Ramón
photography Riki López
As a child, Pau’s father taught his son that the earth can only be understood when you touch it with your hands. A lesson he has never forgotten.
As well as the fields of Mallorca he grew up in, Pau’s passion was drawing, and early on he discovered a love of travelling and studying building structures. He put all this together and, when the time was right, decided to enrol in the School of Architecture at the Ramon Llull University in Barcelona.
“When I left university, I was certain that I would never build a house because my generation suffered the economic crisis of 2012,” recounts Pau with nostalgia, recalling that uncertain period during which his career left him somewhat disillusioned, although he did discover architects who left their mark on him, such as Enric Miralles and Álvaro Siza.
“I was also marked by the birth of a post-crisis architecture, with more identity, in which there were fewer economic means and less costly resources were used when it came to building.”
The first house
Pau smiles when he remembers his first project: Casa Pi. It was 2014, and he and the architect Rafael Munar had just founded Munarq. He has never been tempted to revisit that first project: “I’m scared of finding out how a house ages. Sometimes I wonder what a project of mine will be like ten or fifteen years later. I would like them to age well.”
Wabi-sabi, a Japanese concept that refers to the beauty of imperfection, has become his philosophy and a way of understanding architecture. [...]
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