2025
Colera, Catalonia, Spain
Area: 135 m²
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Architect
Tuomo Jauhiainen
Quantity surveyor
Assumpció Torres Morell
The project is a compact holiday house in Colera, a small village on the Mediterranean coast of the Empordà region in Catalonia. The design draws on the language of the traditional Mediterranean white volume: a clean, almost cubic form whose whitewashed surfaces respond as much to climate as to composition, reflecting the intense summer sun while reinforcing the building's presence within the village.
The white volume is anchored in local material traditions. Traditional terracotta tiles from the Empordà are used both as façade cladding and flooring, establishing a warm, earthy counterpoint to the white surfaces and rooting the house within its regional context.
As summer life is lived largely outdoors, the brief prioritised providing bedrooms for the entire family over a large interior living area. The result is a deliberately compact house that nevertheless accommodates four bedrooms. In contrast, the main living space is conceived as an expansive indoor–outdoor room: large sliding glazed openings dissolve the boundary between inside and outside, allowing the adjacent terrace to become a natural extension of the house during the warmer months.
The site slopes steeply towards the north, where the main façade addresses the village. To the south, the building turns inward around a courtyard containing the swimming pool. Oriented towards the sun and sheltered from public view, this space becomes the private centre of the house's outdoor life.
