I just want to carve a house
Emplacement
Cala Llonga, Ibiza Island
Partner in charge
Alexis Cogul
Project Type
Single House
program
Single house and stone atelier
Plot surface
85.000 square meters
Build Surface
670 square meters
Project date
March 2008
Phase
under construction
Client
Private owner
Construction Budget
1.00 mill.
Architecture and food. As defined in the book “Eatingarchitecture” both “actions” embrace taste as a process towards creating something. In both processes, the material is extracted and manipulated with the ends of elaborating a personal creation. If on the one hand the sense of construction is destined to a habitat, food serves as nourishment, but if we can reflect on the premise; architecture stops serving what it was conceived to do and food stops being a form of human survival.
But, can the Mares stone be grated? Can we make Mares powder? Can we fill something with Mares? These are questions that we’d like to share and the results of which would become the manner in which to construct Mares, outside of it’s conventional applications.
On the one hand, we have the manipulation of material, on the other it’s composite power. Perhaps both can be one thing. A form of working the material that allows ways of understanding and repairing the stone. (Oteiza metamorphasized the cube, Gargallo made plans for volumes. Apparently two thematics barely immovable such as the way to form a cube, o the manner of creating a three dimensional sculpture. If we look at Oteiza’s sculptures, the cutting, the contact, the manner of proposing visuals and the entrance of light to internal parts make the cube something of the imaginary— that which we read in the conjuncture but is not defined by it’s geometry. We see a cube without it being present. As he would call them “metamorphic boxes”) Might they resemble the stone? We are reminded of the sensation of emptying something to discover it’s interior space... the grotto... what has been eroded by something foreign to the proper material... in this case the hands of the sculptor... in others a quarry.
The message is clear. There are few references to Mares, in either matter nor as a construction material. It always appears in a typical use.
A house for a quarry, someone who will contruct their home manually piece by piece, will provide the opportunity to treat the material as something unique. The house is conceived as the entrance to the grotto, always the the addition of pieces facilitating visuals across its joints and vacancies. A the same time, the plan is oriented towards the best visuals in relation to it’s altitude. A spiral mode, obligating the house to face all of its sides, forcing it to have four facades.
The basement, access to vehicles, proposes an iluminated space to the north, destined to the sculpture studio, where the stone is carved. The vast property belonging to the house helps to situate it atop a natural slope that avoids a strong excavation and allows the placement of the house in the only furrow on the natural curve of the terrain/property.
The first floor access is from north to south, gaining entry through the center and emphasizing it’s entrance. It’s true magnitude is understood not from the outside, but rather the moment you walk into it, where the value of the landscape and it’s strong mediterránean vegetation prevail.
