On a narrow plot of land in Girona's historic center, where party walls stretch endlessly and light inside homes always seems scarce, architect Víctor Bouman—head of the studio Bouman Arquitectura, based in Girona and Llançà—came across one of these properties. What had once been an extremely long and narrow terraced house, over thirty meters deep and only four and a half meters wide, was, when they arrived, a veritable ruin: collapsed roofs, persistent dampness, damaged floors and cladding, and a very real feeling of being in a dark, endless tunnel.

From the street, Vil·la Emma appears very small, quiet, and peaceful, almost as if it barely exists. In Binibèquer Vell, on a plot that is more open than enclosed with Menorcan wooden barriers, dry stone walls, and low vegetation, the façade facing the dead-end roundabout consists of little more than a discreet door and a white wall that doesn't seek any prominence. There is nothing in this exterior image that betrays what lies beyond. It is a seemingly simple house, deeply rooted in Menorca, that has chosen not to attract attention, not to overwhelm, not to impose itself. And precisely for that reason, from other angles, and especially upon entering, Vil·la Emma surprises.

When the real estate agency told him about a house in Montuïri that they weren't even offering because it was "a disaster" that he wouldn't like anyway, architect Luis Arredondo knew that, precisely for that reason, he wanted to see it. The head of the Arrel studio was looking for a place to live and work, and that ground floor, upper floor, and rooftop terrace—all dark, damp, and without any view—that little house between party walls that nobody wanted, fit more with an intuition than with a plan for living and working. It was sunken in, boxed in between party walls that far exceeded its height—it had a five-meter facade to the north, with existing stone walls, and was compressed between a twelve-meter-high southern party wall and a ten-meter-high northern facade—it lacked ventilation, and the upper floor, seven meters higher, was only fifty square meters. Furthermore, the fact that the town of Montuïri is built on a hill created a difference in elevation of up to four meters between the street and the back of the house. It was all challenges to overcome.

There are houses that, however contemporary they may appear, seem to have always been there. The house that the Twobo studio—led by architects Pablo Twose, María Pancorbo, and Alberto Twose—has built in Matadepera belongs to this category: a highly contemporary architecture that doesn't impose itself, that buries itself in the terrain, and that blends seamlessly into the landscape. It is a house made, literally, of the color of the earth itself.

For years, this building in the historic center of Palamós stood closed, for sale, and in a state of ruin. It was one of those unassuming corners found in old towns, seemingly destined for oblivion. Yet, beneath the dust and decay, it still retained traces of a once vibrant life. When the future owners discovered it, even before deciding to purchase, they asked architect Judit Falgueras to take a preliminary look, an honest assessment to help determine if this damaged structure could be transformed into a meaningful housing project.

Perched atop an elongated plot of land in the municipality of Manacor, nestled between the green of a pine forest and a young carob grove, Ca'n Gallineta seems to want to hide, to blend into its surroundings. OAM Arquitectes, the Manacor-based studio of brothers Biel and Toni Oliver Galmés, have practiced discretion: a horizontal, low, serene architecture that doesn't seek to compete with its environment but rather to almost disappear. It's a house that, from a distance, might go unnoticed if one doesn't know it's there.

Entering this house, designed by the studio 05 AM Arquitectura, is like opening a window onto a new dimension. This is because the architects who run this Girona-based studio, Joan Arnau and Carme Muñoz, conceived a discreet and secluded entrance to the north. However, shortly after passing through the front door, one discovers an interior that suddenly and generously expands to the south, flooded with light.

Before it was a home, it was a workshop—yes, a carpentry shop. For decades, planks were worked within the walls now inhabited by a family. It smelled of wood and the sound of their own tools echoed. Today, that past is not only remembered, it's breathed in. Architect Clara Crous, who describes hers as a practice of "conscious, local architecture and interior design," has transformed the old carpentry shop in a village in the Alt Empordà into a home that looks to the present without abandoning its original essence. Her intervention doesn't erase the traces of what was there, but rather makes it visible and transforms it into a vital structure of the project.

In one of the urban centers of the Bay of Alcudia, just a few meters from the sea, Ca'n Karl is a holiday home that is prepared for year-round use and also, and above all, to respond to the pace of its inhabitants. It is a project by the VMA studio, led by architects Vicenç Mulet and Elena García, and it can be said that it was built with a double challenge: how to fit an ambitious program into a small plot and how to do so with a construction system that is still little established. The result is a fresh and measured architecture, with a Mediterranean taste and technologically advanced.

It's not a house for those who understand living as a succession of conventional spaces. Nor for those who seek comfort within predictable coordinates. It opens the door to new ways of living. The entrance is as if you were entering a small, enclosed world, like a village protected by a wall that runs almost around the entire perimeter of the site.

In the heart of the Raval district, an apartment with an impossible floor plan has been converted into a home-cum-studio that prioritizes art—or the work of art—over relaxation. This is Agustí Costa's interior design project for an artist who wants to live by working, not work for the sake of living. On Barcelona's Carrer del Carmen, on the top floor of an 1870 Modernista building renovated by Josep Pujol i Brull in 1911, the apartment measures only 1.25 meters wide in some sections and reaches 6.45 meters in others, encompassing at least eight different widths over 33 linear meters.^² Useful. The long, narrow space, with four interior courtyards and many structural elements, was meant to cease being a conventional home. It's now a workshop with a bedroom, kitchen, and living room.

The renovation of a small, simple terraced house in the center of Badalona was approached as an emptying exercise in order to rethink the way of living and the interior layout, and above all, to create more open and much brighter spaces. Architects Anna Prats and Joan Valls, founders of the studio that bears their names, did so by emptying and redistributing, in collaboration with fellow architect Pol Viladoms. They had to empty that house, which hadn't been inhabited for years and had accumulated a significant amount of moisture because it was closed, compartmentalized, lacking ventilation, and, above all, lacking natural light. However, the exercise they undertook went far beyond a simple emptying.

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.

I wanted to experience "a way of life." Ignacio Morente Gemas confesses that when he was studying architecture, he already looked at the facade of that old straw warehouse in the old town of a municipality in Baix Llobregat. Built in 1924, it had been abandoned for over twenty years, and when he was able to buy it during the pandemic, he didn't hesitate. Now the project calls to him. The workshop of dreams, because that dark, dilapidated warehouse has become the home he shares with his partner and also the headquarters of IMG Taller de Arquitectura, the studio that bears his initials. Furthermore, it's the place where he's been able to experiment not only with a different way of living, but also with architectural issues such as spatial design, the use of materials, light penetration, ventilation, and, above all, the use of existing resources.

This cistern has a lot of history. And we're not referring so much to the time that has passed since it was built, in the early 1940s, to collect and store the water that came down from the streets of the village of Campanet and supply the lands of the Son Gener estate, which would later be divided into plots and sold. We're talking above all about a family story: that of the architect Maria Gelabert Paris, whose father, a farmworker, bought a plot of land on the estate where he had lived as a child because his parents owned it—owners, in Mallorca, are the peasants who manage the estate for the lords who are its owners. Yes, the architect's father bought that plot of land where there was a terrace that protruded a meter and a half from the ground level. He knew, or had heard all his life, that the estate's cistern was there, but it had no entrance; all that was visible was a small manhole. They opened it, went inside, and discovered that cistern, a semi-basement, measuring about 90 square meters and with a rather impressive barrel vault. And they began to dream.

This house in Begur, a new building designed by architects Emiliano López and Mónica Rivera, reflects the Mediterranean ideal that existed in the 1960s for summer or retirement homes, especially for foreigners. In fact, the house surrounded by pine trees and with views of the Aiguablava cove belongs to a foreign family who now, for their periods of recreation throughout the year, and with a view to future retirement, wanted to build one of those traditional Mediterranean houses, rather simple, easy to live in. Pleasant temperature – that contemporary life can offer.