Plywood House

Staff at the Ma­jor­can Feina studio ar­chi­tects’ prac­tice have ex­tended one of the island’s classic sin­gle-storey town­houses in a quiet area of Palma de Mal­lorca, and have done so by com­bin­ing re­gional craft tra­di­tions with the latest en­gi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy. The upshot is a house that, by dint of an upper storey having been added, pro­vides suf­fi­cient space for family life whilst also taking on a breezily new-age visual iden­tity.

The Plywood House is a de­light­fully un­pre­ten­tious example of build­ing on from a pre-ex­ist­ing ar­chi­tec­tural sit­u­a­tion. The load-bear­ing walls in the orig­i­nal sin­gle-storey casa have been em­ployed as a means of support for a second storey. On the lookout for a light­weight so­lu­tion that would not subject the ex­ist­ing walls to undue strain, the ar­chi­tects came up with an ex­cit­ing method of build­ing with timber modules. The ap­proach adopted is clearly visible in the struc­ture’s walls and ceil­ings and can be re­garded as a

variant of the Easy Build­ing policy jus­ti­fi­ably pos­tu­lated by so many these days. Section of light­weight poplar plywood were cut to size on a CNC milling machine and have been wrought in such a way that they can be fitted to­gether as re­cur­rent modules on site. This is per­formed with the aid of slot-and-lock mech­a­nisms as clever as they are straight­for­ward that es­sen­tially carry on from where tra­di­tional means of joining pieces of wood to­gether left off.

The house is a joyous af­fir­ma­tion of colour and ma­te­r­ial inside and out. The com­po­si­tion and chro­matic vi­brancy of its façade would appear to have been in­spired by the beau­ti­ful con­crete tiles – some old, some new – adorn­ing floors in the Plywood House. Beige masonry forms a post-and-rail lattice running out towards the court­yard and garden whose com­part­ments are filled with ter­ra­cotta-coloured glazed tiles and windows gleam­ingly framed in turquoise. The entire op­er­a­tion is focused upon timber, stone and ter­ra­cotta – straight­for­ward, un­processed ma­te­ri­als.

The ar­chi­tects have also de­signed pre­ci­sion-fit plywood fur­nish­ings to go with their built cre­ation. The size­able stair­case serving the newly erected upper storey is like­wise con­ceived to re­sem­ble an item of fur­ni­ture. The struc­tural geom­e­try of ceil­ings that have been left rough, un­plas­tered and un­coated is nev­er­the­less such as to cause or­na­men­tal motifs to ma­te­ri­alise, as the ar­chi­tects are quite rightly eager to em­pha­size. The way these motifs em­bell­ish spaces recalls arabesque or­na­men­ta­tion in the ancient heart of the city of Palma.

The dis­tinc­tive, re­gion­ally char­ac­ter­is­tic con­crete and ter­ra­cotta tiles were sourced from tra­di­tional Ma­jor­can man­u­fac­tur­ers. The newly fitted handles hail from her­itage company FSB and serve as points of con­trast to the period fit­tings on the orig­i­nal timber French windows. FSB 1012 was the model opted for, one that has its origins in a blue­print by the ar­chi­tect Hans Poelzig and which FSB has been pro­duc­ing for decades. It has been fitted – in a range of colour vari­ants – to windows and doors in the build­ing.