Scroll-driven film sequence. The living terrace of Ponente at golden hour: the open glass wall, the olive stirring, the low sun over the sea.
Ponente's bronze door ajar, golden light across the stone floor.

Serra de Tramuntana · Mallorca

Ponente

Built for one hour of the day.Built for one hour of the day.

Descend

Scroll-driven film sequence. Ponente on its headland at 18:58, the camera easing along the west elevation in warm evening light.

SC-02 / ORIENTATION — 18:58

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.

Scroll-driven film sequence. The arrival court at 19:12: the camera pushing toward the bronze door, low golden light raking the plaster.

SC-03 / THE FABRIC — 19:12

The Fabric
01Lime plasterApplied in seven coats by hand. It absorbs the western light instead of returning it.
02The cantileverThe living terrace projects 4.2 metres past its last support. From the water below, the house appears to stand on nothing.
03Sixty stepsA stair cut directly into the cliff face, reaching a private mooring.
04The glassNine metres, frameless, sliding entirely into the wall. Open, the room has three sides.
05The old wallsFour hundred years of dry-stone terracing, retained and rebuilt. The house is by some distance the newest thing on the site.
Scroll-driven film sequence. The west room at 19:31, the camera gliding toward the open glass wall and the low sun over the sea.

SC-04 / THE MEASURE — 19:31

The measure.

Ponente holds 680 square metres inside and 1,240 square metres of terrace and grounds.

680

m² interior

1,240

m² terrace & grounds

40

m above sea level

1608

terraces first built

5

bedrooms
Scroll-driven film sequence. The stair cut into the cliff at 19:47, the camera drifting down toward the sea, ember light on the rock.

SC-05 / THE DESCENT — 19:47

Three levels, cut into the terrace.

Ponente's arrival court sits forty metres above the sea, its living floor at twenty-eight and its bedrooms and pool at sixteen.

Altitude 40 metres above sea level

Level 0040MArrival court, garage, service

Level -0128MLiving, kitchen, west terrace

Level -0216MBedrooms, pool, descent to the sea

Scroll-driven film sequence. The pool terrace as the sun sets over the sea: golden hour draining to dusk, the interior lights warming on.

SC-06 / THE HOUR — 19:58

The wind arrives before the colour does.

Ponente at night, one window lit, reflected in the black pool.

SC-07 / ENQUIRY — 20:02

Ponente is offered privately.

Viewings of Ponente are by private appointment only, and every viewing is accompanied.

Want a site like this?

Atelier Vivance, the studio that built this demo, designs and builds sites like this one.