Sandstone on the outside and brick on the inside: the comfort of a house with a double skin and a courtyard at its heart

The bare brick staircase leading to Ca na Catalina y Joan, on the outskirts of Llubí, anticipates the importance of materials—local materials—and construction practices. The architects of TEd'A, a studio headed by Irene Pérez and Jaume Mayol, have spent many years researching ways to bring traditional construction into the present to achieve the best climatic response, the most natural and sustainable, and so that the house also provides maximum comfort to its inhabitants. They know that "traditional typologies are climatic responses infinitely perfected over time," and they say so, but at the same time they take a step further into the present, aware that life today requires other solutions and has other resources.

Ca Catalina y Joan is, in many ways, a conceptual exercise. It is so because of the house's cross-shaped floor plan, which adds length to the façade and gives each room its own private outdoor corner. But also because the cross-shaped floor plan forms a central core that, conceived as a courtyard, becomes a beneficial element for life in the house. The courtyard, at the heart of a home that, as is the case here, is just over 200 square meters, allows all rooms, in addition to the exterior, to enjoy a gratifying connection with the courtyard. This contributes to natural light and the necessary cross-ventilation, as well as enabling a more intimate, inward-facing life, which is often appreciated. What's more, the courtyard becomes a vital center, another room in the home, and an open-air space.

It is also a conceptual exercise that around the courtyard, inside the house, the architects of TEd'A have created an ambulatory, a path reminiscent of a cloister and which connects the different rooms and gives them a double space that is often very useful – for studying, for playing, for being. This ambulatory has been conceived with great height and has been finished with small skylights that, while introducing natural light into the house, create a chimney effect, sucking in the air.

The material question

But it's not all about spatial design or typology. The architects at TEd'A take special care with materials, which goes beyond the usual premise of working with zero-mile products, at least as far as working on an island allows. They make us understand that sustainability means avoiding the transportation of materials, but also trying to avoid generating waste, and ensuring that the way they are used contributes to the proper hydrothermal functioning and comfort of the home.

In this sense, Ca na Catalina y Joan has a double skin, because it is built with an outer layer of sandstone, the sandstone that so well defines the landscape of Mallorca, and an inner layer of locally made perforated brick. In this case, the brick is laid leaving the roughest part visible and the perforation is done in the chamber. No sandstone or brick is cut, so thermo-clay pieces are used to make adjustments and to resolve biases.

In any case, both the cruciform floor plan of Ca na Catalina y Joan and the structure of load-bearing walls and small concrete vaults follow the direction of a markedly elongated plot, which favors views of the mountains and shelters life in the house from the north winds and the onslaught. And everything, from the structural solidity to the ventilation, from the vaults that aid thermal inertia to the materials used to build the house, guarantees comfort that makes this home a space of well-being in the center, or almost in the center, of the island of Mallorca.