BackCa’n Terra approaches nature by exploring the way of inhabiting the house. The dwelling is in an old Marais stone quarry, showing the typical rocky landscape of Menorca on the outside. To rescue it from neglect, Ensamble Studio uses technology to carry out a digital modelling of the cave’s interior projecting thousands of laser points on the surfaces, recording precise data about the structure. With these tools, the architect creates a new space starting out from small interventions that pursue maximizing the relationship with nature.
In contrast to what’s usually been done in the past, the architecture remains in the background, letting the materiality of the place suggest the distribution of the house. In this way it avoids imposing itself on its context, proposing a journey to the interior of matter. As the project description says: “If the history of civilization has evolved to a great extent transcending the idea on site, in Ca’n Terra, the process is inverted and history is transformed into architecture.”
The new open space is the result of a process of experimentation with context. It keeps a close bond with the earth, but at the same time manages to adopt the identity of the dwelling.
