With the help of 3D laser scanning, Ensamble Studio excavates a quarry on the island of Menorca to create an experimental retreat.
Ca’n Terra approaches nature by exploring the way of inhabiting the house. The dwelling is in an old Marais stone quarry, showing the typical rocky landscape of Menorca on the outside. To rescue it from neglect, Ensamble Studio uses technology to carry out a digital modelling of the cave’s interior projecting thousands of laser points on the surfaces, recording precise data about the structure. With these tools, the architect creates a new space starting out from small interventions that pursue maximizing the relationship with nature.
Ca’n Terra transforms an abandoned quarry in Menorca to make imaginative architectures about reading space, recycling landscape, and quarrying light. The architects propose “a trip to the interior being of matter, and recognize the freedom with which it gives us spaces to live.”
"If the history of civilization has evolved transforming ideas into matter, here the process is inverted. We enter the space like explorers would do, equipped with the technology that expands our vision in the dark; scanning the solid structure that was built for us.
Behind the scan, the architect's eye, directing, interpreting, creating the space again, completing it with operations that are familiar to the stone mass: new cuts to build using air and light. Architecture appears.
Then we can inhabit. In lieu of the imposing action that we often exert on the environment, we propose a trip to the interior being of matter, and recognize the beauty of the spaces that are waiting to be lived." — Ensamble Studio
