Ca'n Terra is the house of the earth: first just that, earth, after quarried with industrial logic, voided and abandoned, to be rediscovered one hundred years later and come to be architecture.
If the history of civilization has evolved transforming ideas into matter, here the process is inverted. We enter the space like explorers would do, equipped with the technology that expands our vision in the dark; scanning the solid structure that was built for us.

Behind the scan, the architect's eye, directing, interpreting, creating the space again, completing it with operations that are familiar to the stone mass: new cuts to build using air and light. Architecture appears.

Then we can inhabit. In lieu of the imposing action that we often exert on the environment, we propose a trip to the interior being of matter, and recognize the beauty of the spaces that are waiting to be lived.
Débora Mesa & Antón García-Abril. Ensamble Studio
 

Project description by Ensamble Studio

Ca'n Terra is the house of the earth. The fruit that nature gives us, as a found space; which requires tillage and cultivation to imbue the received offering with domesticity.

If the history of civilization has greatly evolved transforming ideas into built work, in Ca'n Terra, the process is inverted and history interpreted to transform it into architecture.

The transfer from drawing to built mass gives way to the translation of given matter to digital data through the architectural reading of a geological discovery.

The discovered space has industrial logic as former Mares stone quarry, artistic potential as sublime cavern carved by hand, and mineral nature as extract of the stony landscape on the island of Menorca.

Finding this excavated space in the guts of the earth and reinventing its use implies writing a new story that can rescue it from its abandonment.

As first contact we enter the space like explorers would do, equipped with the technology that expands our vision in the dark; throwing millions of laser points on the wrinkles of the continuous stone surface we register with millimetric precision the solid structure that was built for us and is now ready to be polished and inhabited.

Behind the scan, the architect's eye, directing, interpreting, creating the space again. That's why the discovery is considered a new work, destined this time to become a room to contemplate nature.

In lieu of an imposing action that many times architecture exerts on the environment, we propose a trip to the interior being of matter, and recognize the freedom with which it gives us spaces to live.

Read more
Read less

More information

Label
Architects
Text
Ensamble Studio. Principals.-​ Antón García-Abril & Debora Mesa.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Design team
Text
​Javier Cuesta, Borja Soriano, Massimo Loia, Alvaro Catalan, Marco Antrodicchia, Sebastián Zapata, Arianna Sebastiani, Mónica Acosta, Gabriele Marinello, Mengyuan Cao.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Consultants
Text
Urculo Engineering.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Dates
Text
Design years.-​ 2017–2018. Construction.-​ 2018.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Program
Text
Residential Landscape.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Photography
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa.

Balancing education, research and practice, the office explores innovative approaches to architectural and urban spaces, and the technologies that build them.

Among the studio’s most relevant completed works are Hemeroscopium House and Reader’s House in Madrid (Spain), Music Studies Center and SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), The Truffle in Costa da Morte (Spain), Cervantes Theater in Mexico City and, more recently, Cyclopean House in Brookline (USA) and Structures of Landscape for Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana (USA). Currently, bigger scale projects are being developed like Zip Tower, Plot Tower and Big Bang Tower, high-rise systems for residential and mix-use programs.

Their work has been extensively published in both printed and digital media, exhibited world-wide -MOMA NY 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2015, Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture 2013 in Shenzhen, GA International Exhibitions 2014-2010 in Tokyo, Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, etc.-  and awarded with international prizes -Austrian State Award for Architecture 2014, Iakov Chernikhov Prize 2012, Rice Design Alliance Prize 2009 to emerging architects, Architectural Record Design Vanguard Prize 2005, among others.

Beside their professional career, both principals keep a very active research and academic agenda, have been invited professors and lecturers at numerous universities and architecture forums, were curators of Spainlab -Spanish Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia- in 2012 and founded that same year the POPlab (Prototypes of Prefabrication Research Laboratory) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), that they continue to direct.
Read more
Published on: January 23, 2020
Cite: "Inhabit the earth. CA'N TERRA by Ensamble Studio" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/inhabit-earth-can-terra-ensamble-studio> ISSN 1139-6415
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...