Architects: Miba Simbiotiqa Photography: Adrià Goula Construction Period: 2025 Location: Menorca, Spain
This 9-unit multi-family building is volumetrically divided into two units separated by a covered exterior core, reflecting the scale of the built environment in the urban center of Es Migjorn Gran.
One of the volumes is located on the northern side of the plot, at the corner of Avenida Bini-cudrell and Sa Travessera Nova, and houses six of the project’s apartments. The other, to the south of the plot, has three apartments and is located between Sa Travessera Nova and the block’s interior courtyard.
A semi-exterior interstitial space between these two units contains the building’s access, the staircase, the elevator, and the apartment entrances. This space, sheltered from the rain but ventilated through a latticework, facilitates the use of favorable winds to generate permanent air circulation between the street and the interior courtyard, allowing cross-ventilation of the adjacent rooms.
The homes are organized internally around spaces of similar dimensions that are interconnected, minimizing the need for hallways, with the aim of maximizing the usable floor space. This uniformity in the functional modules promotes greater versatility in these rooms and allows them to easily adapt to the changing needs of their users.
Read MoreAll homes (six with two bedrooms and three with one bedroom) have dual exposures, facing the street and the interior landscaped courtyard, to facilitate cross-ventilation and maximize the site’s climatic conditions (sunlight, prevailing winds, etc.). This aims to minimize energy expenditure during the building’s use phase and maximize bioclimatic comfort.
During the design phase, environmental studies were conducted to corroborate the bioclimatic strategies implemented and quantify them in terms of reducing the building’s energy demand.
As a result, solutions such as reinforced thermal insulation, practicable south- and west-facing sunshades, and optimal cross-ventilation were incorporated in all homes to reduce the building’s energy demand through passive measures. The interior courtyard will play an important role in this regard, as it will house two trees and plants to improve air quality and protect the interior façade from the sun in summer. This passive demand reduction is complemented by the installation of photovoltaic solar panels, which in turn create a ventilated shade structure and protect the building’s roof from the sun’s rays in summer.
Structurally, the building is made up of 19cm-thick marés stone walls arranged parallel to Avenida Binicudrell and prefabricated floors made of laminated wood joists and micro-laminated plywood.
The enclosure system consists of two layers of marés stone (19cm thick on the inside and 9cm thick on the outside) with an air chamber and thermal insulation between them. The stone masonry is being laid using the traditional Menorcan method: laid out on wooden wedges, it is first grouted on the outside with lime mortar, and then a very liquid grout, also made of lime mortar, is poured through the vertical and horizontal channels machined into the interior faces of the stone until the entire cavity is filled.
The roof, meanwhile, will be flat and inverted, with 20cm of recycled cotton-based insulation. On this roof, an extensive installation of photovoltaic panels placed on two slopes with an east-west orientation also acts as ventilated sun protection.
Text provided by the architects.
