36 DIGS.NET
| 9.3.2021
OCATED IN MAHÓN BAY, on the Balearic Island of Menorca,
Spain, a building of strict modern bearing offers an insur-
gency of space and, beyond its serene monochromatic
walls, a halo of sun and sky. It is a magical scene for a
deliberate work of architecture that is unambiguously
minimal yet easy-going in its tensions. The concept is
signature OOAA Arquitectura, a Madrid studio directed
by founder and architect Iker Ochotorena that prides
itself on, as the practice puts it, optimizing its "economic and natural
resources while pursuing a timeless and simple architecture."
The studio's instinct for simplicity is sharp and unrelenting.
Simple does not mean a lack of complexity, however. Baleares
house, as this project is known, is architecturally assertive but
unassuming in its naturalism. "To me, the minimalistic process
happens not through a self-restraint exercise, but the opposite: I
place value on the vacuum," says Ochotorena on what he wanted
the architecture to convey. "The vacuum is what is in the middle,
so we need very few things to create it. It is true that the vacuum
is identified with nothingness, but it is not the same because the
vacuum needs to be surrounded by elements that create it."
Bare-minimum in its fixtures and finishes, and proudly uniform
in tone with a host of glass exposures, the project is an homage to
light and space. And such light, such space! "Several constraints,
as well as the clients' needs, helped me draw the volumetry,"
Ochotorena relays. "The North position with views to the sea—not
refusing the back façade openings to the street with the South posi-
tion in order to receive natural light in the inside—are conditioned
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