Local building traditions use local resources and passive design strategies to provide well-being to the human body. All around the world, these traditions have developed and perfected plenty of strategies to provide comfort, understanding that architecture is not only about buildings, but about maintaining a delicate balance with nature. When aiming for natural comfort, you use the materials you have at hand. The materials nature gives us perfectly fit with climatic exigences.
For example, in Mallorca, there is a very popular and common local sandstone called marès. This stone provides a lot of thermal inertia, which helps to keep temperatures cool indoors during even the hottest summer days. At the same time, this local stone is hygroscopic, meaning that it absorbs molecules of water from the air during the humid summer season. And if you allow air to cross through the building, the porous stone will release water into the air, cooling it down.
When we build in Mallorca, we try to take advantage of the behavior of this local stone. But it’s not only about using the stone; it’s about using it in a certain way to increase conditions of comfort. It’s about listening to the material. When you ask how the stone can be used within a space, the most common application is to shape a vault. But the vault is not only a structural solution, it is also a thermal solution: it provides inertia to the space.
Typology
Local typologies are also responses to local climatic needs. In the Mediterranean, for example, we have patio houses. These double the facade in order to facilitate cross ventilation and the chimney effect.
In Can Miquel i na Cati (2021), the house is organized around a perfect square patio in the center of the plan. That patio doubles the surface area of the envelope, meaning that during the summer, when the weather is really hot, the house loses more heat. And thanks to the position of the openings, the patio provides cross ventilation to the different rooms.
Similarly, in Can Jaime i n’Isabelle (2018), the interior patio facade folds once and again, creating patios within the patio. This multiplies the exterior surface area and generates outdoor microclimates. And in Can Lluís i n’Eulàlia (2012), the small size of the house means that the patio is not a single common central patio, but is instead divided into four smaller patios located on the perimeter. Here, the house takes the shape of a cross in order to multiply the facade.
Climate
Buildings used to be understood as climatic infrastructures with the capacity to capture the sea breeze or to protect from the cold wind, to collect water or to shelter from the hard rain, to provide shadow or to allow the sun to heat the interior. Searching for natural comfort requires looking for many different passive strategies, not just in terms of form or material, but also in terms of natural resources the site can provide.
In the Northern Hemisphere, south means sun, and in Mallorca, the sea means embat, the breeze that blows perpendicularly inland from the coast on hot summer days. Can Jaime i n’Isabelle is situated on a slope facing south toward the sea. The south facade has a big opening, and has smaller windows on the north facade, which accelerates the breeze as it crosses the house. This movement is complemented by the chimney and cross-ventilation effect caused by the central patio.
The roof hosts local species that do not need to be watered. A green roof, due to its mass, also provides a lot of thermal inertia to the building. The facades—built with leftover stones coming from the preparatory excavation of the site—do this too. The result is a fifty-centimeter-thick cyclopean concrete facade.
Context
Can Guillem i na Cati (2021) is shaped in response to its placement in the urban fabric: the last plot in a row within a dense village. All of the plots in the row have similar proportions and dimensions, approximately ten meters wide and twenty meters long. All of them share party walls, and all of the houses are placed on the southern side of the plot, creating a patio on the northern side. These patios are shady and humid, without direct sunlight most of the year. As the last in the row, Can Guillem i na Cati is placed along the eastern side of the plot, dividing it in two along the north-south axis, with a long narrow patio to the west. The patio here is not central, but becomes like a street. Similarly, the house is arranged like a classical enfilade, with different rooms one after another. As a result, each room has cross ventilation between the street and the patio. Likewise, each of the rooms connects directly to the patio, taking ownership of a different part of it.
Here too the house faces the embat, and features a big window facing the southern breeze, with another smaller window on the opposite back facade to increase air circulation.
Ca na Maria Bel i en Toni (2025) is built inside a dense urban village. The house sits in line with its neighbors, featuring a straight and aligned stone facade and small vertical windows placed on vertical axes. The house wants to go unnoticed. The street facade faces north, which means that the patio facade faces south. The patio facade is open and protected by porches, allowing sunlight into the interior in winter, but shielding it from the same in summer. The patio facade also faces the embat and, once again, features big windows, with smaller ones on the northern facade.
Ca na Maria Bel i en Toni is a very small house, but rises three stories high. The ground floor plan is almost completely open, hosting an exterior space, a porch to access the house, and an outdoor hallway. The air flows through this space between the two facades due to temperature differences. The structure of the house is organized around three different vaults running east-west. In between the three spans is a ninety-centimeter gap. Two of these gaps can be opened on each side to allow fresh air to flow upwards inside. On the roof there are four openings that act as exutories, drawing fresh air from the ground floor due to temperature differences while allowing hot air from the top floor to go out.
Ca na Catalina i en Joan (2023) is a courtyard house built with two layers of local materials that provide inertia and hygroscopy: sandstone on the outer layer and bricks on the inner layer. The house is arranged along the longitudinal direction of the plot, north-south. On the north side are the access street and views towards the Tramuntana mountain range. On the south are more private outdoor spaces, as well as the sun and the embat. The structure of load-bearing walls and small vaults follow the long direction of the plot allow views to the mountains and facilitate the movement of air. Each of the openings has shades that provide privacy and control the amount of sun let in.
The house is arranged in the form of a cross around a central patio. The patio improves the natural lighting conditions and enhances air circulation. The cross-shaped geometry allows each room to enjoy the privacy of an intimate and secluded outdoor space while multiplying the facade area. At the same time, a high ambulatory runs along the perimeter of the courtyard, connecting the different rooms and featuring small skylights on each corner to create the chimney effect. The house also adapts to the topographic difference between the front and back of the site, thus minimizing excavation works, defining different relationships with the courtyard, and enriching the interior space.
Scale
The social housing project in Binissalem (2020) for IBAVI (Balearic Housing Institute) implements different passive strategies on a larger scale. A longitudinal threshold defines the two sides of the building. Configured as a thick facade, this space serves as an extension of each room and works as a thermal control device. Depending on the season and the weather, this threshold can become a porch protecting from the sun, or a gallery collecting solar energy.
The construction strategy of the project consists of two complementary systems: the interior is built with a light, dry building system (a load-bearing wooden structure and light partitions), while the two thick facades are built with heavy, wet systems (sandstone structures for walls and vaults). This exterior hygroscopic system provides a lot of inertia, while at the same time fitting into the local context of the village.
To look around and use what we have at hand provides a type of comfort that is more natural and primitive. This comfort cannot be seen, but it can be felt by the human body. It cannot be photographed, but it can be measured. It is not related to ephemeral trends, but based on eternal human needs. This is the kind of comfort that produces buildings that silently become part of the environment.
