Guided by the client’s vision to step back in time, this small house on the south-eastern countryside of Mallorca stands as a deliberate homage to the ancient Mediterranean. It draws inspiration from the island’s earliest dwellings, where necessity shaped beauty, and simplicity was not a limitation but a craft. The walls rise from local stone blocks directly from the quarry, laid in the tradition of pedra en sec—the dry stone technique that has long endured without mortar, relying on weight, balance, and the patient hand of the mason. Arches of hand-shaped brick recall both Roman engineering and Moorish refinement, while the vaulted ceilings—volta catalana—bring a sense of shelter that is at once humble and monumental.

The floors innside are laid in warm, hand-pressed terracotta, their uneven surfaces catching the light like the worn tiles of ancient farmhouses. Timber beams, left bare, echo the rafters of old fishing huts and rural barns, tying the house to a lineage of honest construction.

Here, materials are not disguised—they are celebrated. Stone, clay, wood and lime, each tell their own story, weathering over time and settling naturally into the landscape. Glass openings frame the slow choreography of light and shadow, while whitewashed facades glow against the ochre soil and blue horizon.

In this meeting of past and present, the house becomes more than a shelter. It is a dialogue across centuries—a quiet, enduring architecture where history, material, and place are woven together in the simplest and most lasting of ways.