VILLA K

A project for a new villa or family house is always personal and emotional. In this case our client, with a strong family link to Korcula (Croatia) had decided to settle and build their final home in Mallorca, in a beautiful plot surrounded by Mediterranean vegetation, a similar landscape and weather to Korcula.

Korcula is the Croatian town where the ancestors of our client come from, it is a beautiful island known for the stunning old and well-preserved architecture of the old town. The town is a collection of small houses put together, all of them different in size and height but with a common architectural language that builds a beautiful balanced urban context, almost a fairy tale town.

The project plot is a large piece of land in a suburban context in the southwest of Mallorca, it has a lot of vegetation that demands preservation as much as possible. It has a gentle slope to the north with a direct view to Mount Galatzó, one of the highest peaks in Mallorca.

During the research and design of the project, memories, nostalgy, and natural context came together and built up the concept for the house. The programme requested by the family is a year-round family home, comfortable and connected to the outside, to the pool and gardens to enjoy Mediterranean outdoor living. Three bedrooms for the family, a guest apartment, an office a big living area with lounge, kitchen and dining, the heart of the house and a special area dedicated to yoga.

The concept of the house puts all these ideas together: the small scale, the “pile-up” of the  houses in Korcula is the inspiration for the project: instead of having a big compact volume that would have a big impact on the existing vegetation and therefore reduce the connection to the nature of the house, the program of the villa is exploded in different volumes, as if they were small Korcula houses that settle in the land maximizing the perimeter and therefore the connection to the landscape of every unit: many gardens and patios are created, not just a front garden like in a typical villa. This explosion of many houses creates a unique multi-patio-house in connection with the nature where every program unit has its own volume-identity.

The materialisation of the project is a combination of stone and wood in the facades and green roofs; natural materials so the connection to the nature is more evident. The wooden structure also echoes the traditional architecture of both Korcula and Mallorca.

The arrangement of the different volumes creating patios and allowing vegetation between them reinforces the ventilation and the shading of the different areas and together with the green roofs create the perfect passive house inspired by the vernacular technologies of passive climate strategies.