Casa Lumen
A house built around the path of the sun — thick limestone walls, deep openings and three courtyards that temper the island heat.
A house for the sun, in three courts.
On a terraced olive slope above the Tramuntana coast, Casa Lumen is organised around three courtyards that follow the sun from morning to evening. The house is built of the stone that was already there.
The clients, a family of four, asked for a house that could hold three generations at once without ever feeling full. They also asked that it be cool in August and warm in January, without mechanical cooling. The answer was mass, shade and orientation: sixty-centimetre limestone walls quarried within the region, deep reveals, and openings placed to catch the sea breeze at dusk.
We kept the dry-stone terraces that crossed the site, threading the plan between them. The main volume sits low against the hill, its roof planted with native thyme; a smaller guest wing steps down toward the olive grove. Between them, three courts — morning, noon and evening — each with its own character and its own tree.
Inside, lime-washed walls and oak joinery keep the palette quiet. Windows are treated as rooms in themselves: window seats, reading alcoves, a bath open to a private court. The house is not large, but it is generous — the difference lies in how the edges are used.
Inside the project.
Photographed across a full day, from the first light in the morning court to the last warmth on the west terrace.
They built us a house that is cool at noon and warm at night. It feels as if it has always been here.
The clients — Casa Lumen, 2024