Serra de Tramuntana · Mallorca
Ponente
Built for one hour of the day.
Descend
01
The Approach
The road ends before the house does.
02
Arrival
Four olives, one gate, no announcement.
03
The Threshold
Dark, then light. The building's only trick.
04
The Room That Faces West
Nine metres of glass and nothing behind it.
05
The Edge
The terrace stops. The water doesn't.
06
The Descent
Sixty steps cut into the rock.
07
Ponente
The wind arrives before the colour does.
08
After
The house keeps its own light.
A house with one orientation.
Ponente occupies a terrace of cliff on the western edge of the Tramuntana, forty metres above the water. The site was dry-stone agricultural terracing for four hundred years before it held a building. Those walls are still here. The house sits inside them rather than on top of them.
Every principal room faces west. The kitchen, the guest suites, and the service spaces are pushed back into the rock and lit from above. The plan has no compromise rooms — nothing important looks at anything but the sea.
Lime plaster, local sandstone, olive wood, bronze. Materials chosen because they weather rather than resist. The house will look better in ten years than it does today.
Lime plaster
Applied in seven coats by hand. It absorbs the western light instead of returning it.
The cantilever
The living terrace projects 4.2 metres past its last support. From the water below, the house appears to stand on nothing.
Sixty steps
A stair cut directly into the cliff face, reaching a private mooring.
The glass
Nine metres, frameless, sliding entirely into the wall. Open, the room has three sides.
The old walls
Four hundred years of dry-stone terracing, retained and rebuilt. The house is by some distance the newest thing on the site.
- 680
- m² interior
- 1,240
- m² terrace & grounds
- 40
- m above sea level
- 1608
- terraces first built
- 5
- bedrooms
Three levels, cut into the terrace.
Level 00
arrival court, garage, service
Level −01
living, kitchen, west terrace
Level −02
bedrooms, pool, descent to the sea
Enquiries
Ponente is offered privately.
Viewings by appointment, accompanied.