All 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.

As first contact we enter the space like explorers would do, equipped with the technology that expands our vision in the dark; throwing millions of laser points on the wrinkles of the continuous stone surface we register with millimetric precision the solid structure that was built for us and is now ready to be polished and inhabited. Behind the scan, the architect’s eye, directing, interpreting, creating the space again. That’s why the discovery is considered a new work, destined this time to become a room to contemplate nature.

In lieu of an imposing action that many times architecture exerts on the environment, we propose a trip to the interior being of matter, and recognize the freedom with which it gives us spaces to live.

Text provided by the architect.