A Cave for Living, Built From a Traditional Spanish Toolshed

In Mallorca’s craggy countryside, a pair of cottages combine primordiality and

hypermodernism.

The exterior of the Purple House, one of two structures built by Mar Plus Ask among the
centuries-old olive trees of the Tramuntana Mountains in Mallorca.CreditCreditPiet-Albert
Goethals

By Nancy Hass
Published Sept. 19, 2019Updated Sept. 20, 2019

WHEN THE 34-YEAR-OLD Spanish architect Mar Vicens turned 16, her father got on
his Vespa to begin the task he had undertaken for each of his three children: searching
for a bit of property for her in the Serra de Tramuntana mountains on the
northwestern coast of Mallorca. Although based half of the year in Valencia — Spain’s
third largest city, an hour away by plane — the family also has roots going back
generations in Mallorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands. The Tramuntanas, named
a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2011, are sui generis, from both a geological and an
aesthetic perspective: Fifty-five miles long, with summits of up to 4,700 feet, the
onetime coral reefs from the Miocene era have eroded into sharp peaks that are
sheared cleanly off in many places, dropping vertiginously to the sea.

While Mallorca’s southern beaches have been host to a massive Pan-European party
scene since the 1970s, the Tramuntanas remain craggy and unspoiled. The ancient
villages that punctuate the cliffs — the island was settled in prehistoric times and
claimed over the centuries by Phoenician, Roman and Moorish invaders — have long
attracted cultured bohemians, including the British writer Robert Graves, who in
1929 moved to the town of Deià with his lover, the American poet Laura Riding, and
mostly remained there until his death in 1985.

More than a thousand years ago, Arab settlers cut paths through the mountains (the
trails are still used by intrepid hikers) and began building elaborate stacked-stone
terraces. They also created sophisticated irrigation systems that transformed the arid
landscape, which receives more rain than the rest of the island, into verdant, vertical
Mediterranean farmland. Almond, fig and carob trees flourish beside the boulders, and
countless productive olive trees, most of them several centuries old, grow on the hills.
Sheep wander through the rock formations, keeping the grasses in check and providing
organic fertilizer. Much of the mountains’ arable land has been split into small parcels
owned by Spanish families; each has a few acres of orchard to cultivate, which must be
done by hand because the terrain is too rocky to get machines up the paths; the resulting
olive oil is prized for its smoothness and lack of acidity.

A large stone serves as a focal point for the Pink House. The fireplace often burns during
the day to reduce the house’s humidity.CreditPiet-Albert Goethals

Although there are few permanent residences here, many of the properties have tiny
one-room shacks, some partly built into the rock. With thick stucco or stone walls and
tiny window openings, they are mostly used to store tools — or, perhaps, a cot for naps
on hot summer afternoons. Each Sunday, after a week of harvesting, families travel up
the mountains to assemble a paella, eating outside on spare wooden tables in the
afternoon sun.

Through the years, Vicens and her relatives would ascend from their vacation home
below to enjoy the tranquillity and view from her two-and-a-half-acre plot. There was
one rough-hewn toolshed on the property when they bought it — a local family harvests
the olives for them — but little else. Armed with a sketch pad, a book and a bottle of
wine, they would watch the ocean below, occasionally rising from their chairs to collect a
few figs.

SIX YEARS AGO, after Vicens met Ask Anker Aistrup, the 39-year-old Danish architect
with whom she co-founded the studio Mar Plus Ask in 2015 (which recently relocated
from Berlin to Valencia and Mallorca), the couple began conceptualizing a cottage that
would enable them to stay on the mountain overnight. They were determined that the
project honor the vernacular of the Tramuntanas, remaining as simple — and as
compact — as those tiny traditional huts. “This place is a rare example of where man has
given more beauty to nature than he has taken,” Aistrup says. “You want to continue
that.”
Ultimately, their plan comprised two minuscule off-grid structures, each a mere 120
square feet or so, which together provide the rudiments of living, at least for short
stretches. Both of the buildings, which took them four months to complete and were
finished last year, enshrine the disciplined approach of the architects, whose practice
focuses on minimalist residences built with natural materials throughout Spain and
European cities such as Copenhagen, Stockholm and Berlin.

The Purple House, built hundreds of years ago as a toolshed.CreditPiet-Albert Goethals

The first structure — named the Pink House, after the color of its stucco interior, chosen
to complement the matte green underside of an olive leaf — is built from stacked stone
and incorporates several large rock outcroppings on the hillside. “We did not want to
move anything,” Aistrup says. “You want to let the site dictate what you do.” The
uniformity of color brings out the velvety texture of the stucco and underlines the
contrast between cavelike primordiality and hypermodernism. The floors are poured
concrete in a matching hue, and the entrance is a nine-foot-high archway over which a
huge teak slab slides closed at night. Inside, there’s a double bed in a corner niche
beside a window with views to the mountains, and a boxy fireplace that is often lit and
kept low (even in summer) to regulate the humidity caused by the difference in
temperature between the warm outdoors and the cool interior. Much of the space is
consumed by the giant rock around which the structure is built, as though it were a
monumental sculpture. A spout is installed high on a wall beside it, creating an open
shower illuminated by a skylight: Water collected on the roof feeds through a stone filter
before cascading down. Outside, a piece of stone they found on-site has been made into
a sink and rigged to the other side of the rock formation. There is no living room, though
they plan to install a long teak table amid the trees. “You live in the light,” Vicens says.

About 30 feet away lies the Purple House — the interior color intended to echo the
darker, glossier side of an olive leaf — designated for cooking and eating. Modified from
the original shed on the property, which was also made from stacked stones and sunk
into a rock formation, it’s a challenge just to enter: You have to thread your way through
jutting chunks of stone to reach the teak Dutch door that replaced the old structure’s
sole small window. The couple poured the cement floor between the existing rocks, so
the surface is smooth and rough in equal measure, further blurring the boundaries
between inside and out.

Like similar structures in the Tramuntanas, the former shed had walls that were two feet
thick to insulate it. Those made the space too narrow to install a kitchen, so the couple
came up with a novel solution: They cut a 4-by-6-foot section out of one wall, thus
creating a counter wide enough for a sink and plumbing, then installed a large frameless
window above it that seems almost invisible. In addition to a small bathroom, there is a
refrigerator powered by solar-roof panels, a tiny table and an alcove in the rock to store
a few dishes. On the cement counter sit two propane burners for simple meals.

The couple now has a 1-year-old daughter, Sol (“sun” in both Danish and Spanish), and
on some summer weekends, Vicens’s two older brothers bring their children from their
own plots nearby. In the evening, after the last candle has burned down, everyone does
what they have always done here in the mountains: very little, taking in the silence and
the scent of olive and lemon on the breeze. “What evolved here over a thousand years is
a response to scarcity rather than excess,” Aistrup says. “That makes it different. It
dictates everything.”