Ca'n Terra is the house of the earth: first just that, earth; after quarry, voided from its Mares stone; then used by the military as ammunition dump during the Spanish Civil War and later abandoned, to be rediscovered decades later and come to be architecture. We find this space by accident, or maybe it finds us. And when the encounter happens we are bound to reinvent it, writing a new story that rescues it from its abandonment.
The creative process that helps to imagine architecture in what is not meant to be architecture happens through direct experience, through an understanding and thorough reading of the existing conditions that help us find the energies to be activated from within. Laser technologies help us see in the dark, accurately capturing the irregular morphology of the quarried structure.
Unearthing, cleaning, consolidating define our design strategy to revive the dormant cave: measured interventions aimed at bringing air, light and thus habitability, to the dark atmosphere of the excavated space. Architectural transformation narrows down to one action: carving light. This action learns from the industrial history of the place and writes a new chapter in the life of the landscape, introducing new tension and meaning to it.
Ca’n Terra lives in nature and builds with it. Equal parts shelter, earthwork and home, Ca’n Terra offers a memorable space to reconcile human actions on the environment with those of nature, to learn to live and to build more lightly, to redefine what comfort is and how to achieve it with sensibility.
Principals: Antón García-Abril & Débora Mesa Project team: Javier Cuesta, Borja Soriano, Alvaro Catalan, Massimo Loia, Marco Antrodicchia, Sebastián Zapata, Arianna Sebastiani, Claudia Armas, Ekam Sahni, Yu-Ting Li, Joel Kim, Gonzalo Peña, Yvonne Asiimwe, Mónica Acosta. Consultants: Urculo Engineering Photo credits: Ensamble Studio, Iwan Baan, James Florio
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit arts.gov
