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In Formentera, a house of white volumes, timber shutters, courtyards, and collected rainwater takes the island’s less photogenic realities seriously.
Formentera is very good at selling the dream: pine trees, pale earth, old stone walls, the sea somewhere past the scrub. What the photographs rarely mention is the maintenance department of paradise: too much sun, too little water, wind when you do not want it, heat sitting in the walls after dark. Ses Clotades, a 295-square-meter house by Marià Castelló on the isthmus below La Mola, is handsome because it is practical first. Its white blocks, concrete podium, timber shutters, and pool are not arranged for a resort fantasy. They are there to make the place livable.
The house is divided into two main volumes. The taller one can operate almost as a private apartment, with the living room, kitchen, and dining area below, the main bedroom above, and a roof terrace with views toward Ibiza and La Mola. The lower block holds three en-suite bedrooms and a guest bathroom. Between them, a glazed passage changes its job with the season: open in summer as a shaded porch, closed in winter to collect warmth. Beneath the platform are the rooms usually hidden in real estate copy but essential to the life of the house: garage, private entrance, library and screening room, gym, laundry, mechanical areas, and a rainwater cistern.
The good decisions are often the least glamorous ones. Openings are placed for cross-ventilation. Sliding and folding shutters manage the daily assault of sun. Shade sails protect the south-facing terrace. Photovoltaic panels occupy the roof of the lower volume. Roofs feed rainwater into the basement cistern. The walls use projected natural cork insulation with lime binder, a low-impact system that also suits the island’s climate. This is sustainability without the sermon; more a matter of etiquette than branding. On Formentera, wasting water or ignoring heat is simply bad manners.
Inside, Lorena Ruzafa and Marià Castelló keep the rooms from becoming another white villa with expensive emptiness. Elena Vinyàrskaya’s art and set design add ceramics, textiles, furniture, and objects that give the interiors a slower, more inhabited tempo. Outside, the house is at its best when half-seen: a shutter opening behind an olive tree, a concrete wall holding shade, a flash of pool water beside dry ground, a white stair cutting into blue sky.
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