This new residential complex in Palma de Mallorca stands out due to its architecture and sustainability features. The façade, consisting of sliding panels made of wooden slats, acts as a solar filter to create stunning effects of changing light and shade on the homes, making the most of the sun, efficiently and all year round. The projects meets with the Passivhaus standards to achieve maximum energy efficiency and a heating/air-conditioning demand of only 15kWh/(m2y). This means a reduction of almost 90% in terms of air heating and cooling requirements compared with a conventional building, resulting in extremely low energy costs. This construction method falls within the nZEB (nearly zero energy building) standard. 

On entering the building, you are greeted by a green wall that leads you out onto the inner courtyard, with different levels, acting as an inner lung of vegetation and trees that continues upward until it reaches the landscaped terraces with pools on the fourth, sixth and eighth floors. The courtyard garden features a gentle waterfall that cascades to the floor below, cooling the courtyard in the summer through evapotranspiration and providing a relaxing sound. This courtyard provides lighting and vegetation to the basement which houses the residents’ pool, gym and spa, transforming it into a unifying vertical axis that links the building’s vegetation and allows cross-ventilation through the garden for all the homes. The residents’ spa area, with walls and floors finished in natural stone, includes a heated indoor pool, steam bath and changing rooms. Next to the pool is the gym, with large windows overlooking the courtyard garden. 

The outside is defined by two types of facades. The first type of cladding is on the side overlooking Paseo Mallorca, which is the sunniest part, with the best views, and where the homes are located. This area has a double façade with large windows. This façade is protected by a second sensitive skin consisting of moving panels of wooden slats that block out the sun in the summer, make the most of the sun in the winter. It is an organic, permeable and changing layer, an exterior reflection of its interior, a solar filter to modulate light and shade, optimized through solar studies, which adapts to the different climate needs and draws upon the tradition of Majorcan pergolas and shutters. Combined with cross-ventilation and a heat recovery system. 

The second type of cladding provides the necessary protection and defines the area containing the private areas. Different textures and rhythms imposed find, in their own diversity, the unity of the whole. Most of the interior materials are local to highlight the essence of the Mediterranean. A simple palette of fine natural materials characterize the interiors: handcrafted lime mortar in all walls and ceilings, local stone for sinks, counters and floors, solid cedar cabinets and pieces of aged brass.