Louis-Antoine Grégo Architects
«Amour de vivre», Albert Camus
« À Ibiza, j’allais tous les jours m’asseoir dans les cafés qui jalonnent le port. Vers cinq heures, les jeunes gens du pays se promènent sur deux rangs tout le long de la jetée. Là se font les mariages et la vie tout entière. On ne peut s’empêcher de penser qu’il y a une certaine grandeur à commencer ainsi sa vie devant le monde. Je m’asseyais, encore tout chancelant du soleil de la journée, plein d’églises blanches et de murs crayeux, de campagnes sèches et d’oliviers hirsutes. Je buvais un orgeat doucâtre. Je regardais la courbe des collines qui me faisaient face. Elles descendaient doucement vers la mer. Le soir devenait vert. Sur la grande face des collines, la dernière brise faisait tourner les ailes d’un moulin. Et, par un miracle naturel, tout le monde baissait la voix. De sorte qu’il n’y avait plus que le ciel et des mots chantants qui montaient vers lui, mais qu’on percevait comme s’ils venaient de très loin. Dans ce court instant de crépuscule, régnait quelque chose de fugace et de mélancolique qui n’était pas sensible à un homme seulement, mais à un peuple tout entier. Pour moi, j’avais envie d’aimer comme on a envie de pleurer. Il me semblait que chaque heure de mon sommeil serait désormais volée à la vie … c’est-à-dire au temps du désir sans objet. Comme dans ces heures vibrantes du cabaret de Palma et du cloître de San Francisco, j’étais immobile et tendu, sans forces contre cet immense élan qui voulait mettre le monde entre mes mains. »
Toward a Reasonable Architecture
1 . Study of context
1.1 Study of the topography and soil analysis
In Ibiza, the limestone soils have allowed the use of lime as the main construction resource: used as mortar, as plaster, or as the characteristic white paint of the Ibizan fincas. The very fertile clay soils favoured earthen constructions and the cultivation of fruit trees, whose powerful roots could pierce the often hard first layer.
1.2 Survey of indigenous material
Various stone quarries are present on Ibiza and the surrounding islands.
In the south of Ibiza, Marès stone, which is easily cut into large blocks, was used to build the defensive towers known as Balafias. Wood is also an easily accessible resource, traditionally and still today used for the manufacture of house ceilings, in particular sabines, an endemic variety of juniper. The use of local materials allows the value of building traditions and the work of the craftsmen who perpetuate them to be recognised.
1.3 Climatology (rainfall, humidity, prevailing winds, sunshine, temperatures)
Designing buildings according to the sunshine, prevailing winds, or rainfall of a site reduces energy needs and increases comfort. The volume of the rooms, the size of the openings and the layout of the spaces are specifically designed according to the chosen site. The traditional Iberian finca is designed with these parameters in mind, and contemporary builders are slowly starting to pay attention to them again.
1.4. Recording ancestral know-how and local customs and tradition
The island of Ibiza has many specific techniques but also more recent and common sense customs to take into account. For example, thermal inertia - the ability of a material to store heat and release it gradually, a technique used all around the Mediterranean - makes it possible to limit the effects of a rapid variation in the outside temperature on the interior “climate” of a house, by damping the amplitude of thermal variations. Poorly insulated houses with no thermal inertia are often air-conditioned or heated without considering the ecological impact this has. Thanks to their thick walls built with insulating and local materials, the Fincas have a thermal inertia that is ideal for the island’s climate.
2 . Constructive mode
2.1. Build with site materials as much as possible
Construction always requires soil adaptation, resulting in excavation or reinforcement of the soil. The resulting surplus is used rather than being transported to a landfill. Where land is sloping, the hillsides are levelled and made cultivable by building terraces in a process known as ‘cut and fill’. The terraces support dry stone walls, built with stones from the ground, which in turn support the terraces. This process, which is characteristic of the Ibizan landscape, does not require any additional materials. - Figure 1
A lime plaster using coloured sand from the site will blend in better with the colours of the local landscape. We can also consider that the materials of the site have already undergone a natural selection of several million years: the pine trees grow near salt water, the silica pebbles are the only ones to have resisted the glacial periods, etc. Using them on site, “at their best”, is not a problem. Using them on site, “in their place”, in their “natural habitat” thus seems to be relevant in the long term.
2.2 Choosing highly durable or bio-sourced furniture
A house is not finished when it is delivered. The life of a building is just beginning. The way of life it induces must continue the sustainability requirement of its construction. Ideally, the choice of furniture should follow this requirement and accompany the identity of these houses. NB: this point could also go in part 3, comfort / habitability
2.3 Choose without prejudice the techniques best adapted to our objective of “constructive responsibility
Choose among ancestral, industrial or innovative techniques those that best allow us to reach our objective. Recently, the techniques of building with raw earth, site concrete or more generally based on bio-sourced materials, have been the subject of important scientific research and are increasingly being reused in a contemporary context. For example, the adobe builder Nicolas Meunier has been developing for about ten years a semi-industrial adobe made with the help of a mechanical compactor which preforms blocks that are then assembled with a crane. The clay of the red earths of Ibiza could make it possible to exploit this innovative semi-industrial method whose merit is to allow us to benefit from the constructive advantages of traditional adobe while profiting from the mechanical benefits of its industrialization.
3 . Comfort / Habitability
3.1 Implementation and optimal natural comfort
The aim is to achieve natural comfort through the integration of climatic data, the use of materials available on site and the implementation of relevant processes. By a judicious implantation and volumetry it is possible that the house responds in an optimal way to the climatic conditions of the island and the constraints of the site. The entrance portico, of which there are different versions around the Mediterranean, provides the necessary shade in summer, while in winter it allows the lower rays to penetrate the house. In addition, the arrangement of the openings guarantees ventilation and cooling according to the prevailing winds. The addition of a wooden pergola covered with vines provides an additional solar filter adapted to the seasons; thick in summer and blank from autumn, once the leaves have fallen.
3.2 Designing a healthy and responsible home ecosystem
Favour natural ventilation and air conditioning: Wind ventilates, dries or cools. Coupled with an underground rainwater supply, the wind capture and circulation systems found in Iranian wind towers or Canadian wells optimise natural ventilation, cooling and sanitisation of houses. In Ibiza, natural ventilation systems are still visible in most of the old houses. Our project is to apply and adapt these traditional techniques to the design of the spaces in order to offer optimum contemporary comfort. We can also favour the production of energy from locally available resources, or as short an energy production circuit as possible: for example, cogeneration converts the mechanical energy released by a natural fuel (biomass, household waste or organic waste) into electricity and heat.
3.3 Maintaining a sustainability requirement even in the choice of equipment
It is necessary to make a conscious choice of household appliances that are non-toxic to health and consume less or little water, made of metal rather than plastic, and of good quality for their durability in order to combat programmed obsolescence.
3.4. Recovering wastewater, filtered and reused in the landscape
The aridity of the island’s climate has always led the inhabitants to draw water from aquifers or groundwater in order to get through the long dry summers. With the increase in tourist numbers over the last few decades, it has become increasingly difficult to replenish these natural springs during the episodically rainy winters. The water is drawn from ever greater depths, up to hundreds of metres. Softening seawater and transporting drinking water by boat are other possible options, but these systems are energy-intensive and very expensive. In this context, and in order to limit unnecessary wastage, it is important to consider with care both the source of the water and its reuse after consumption. It is now possible to organise rainwater harvesting and filtration in order to meet all domestic needs while minimising wastage and environmental impact. The installation of large underground cisterns allows rainwater collected from flat roofs to be drained.
4 . The act of making things together
4.1. Fundamentally bringing together the acts of building and living
The act of building is one task among many others, which are those of constructing one’s daily life and adaptation to the world. People have built their own homes, and in many cases still do, knowing their needs, making their habitat evolve according to them, and thus naturally combining, in most cases, economy, pleasure and practicality, and then taking care of it.
“What does building mean now? The Old High German word for build, buan, means to inhabit. This means: to dwell, to stay. We have lost the proper meaning of the verb bauen (to build), namely to dwell, to care for and to build, such is building in the narrow sense” Heidegger
4.2 Working with a team of specialists
This project was born from the desire of Valéry Grégo and Thomas Rottner to propose a “case study” of 4 individual houses, a methodological essay intended to question the meaning of modernity in architecture / the notion of responsible architecture, and in particular its relationship with the environment and the passing of time. Inspired by his brother’s work, and in particular that of Studio Mumbai on the Hôtel du Couvent project in Nice and the Château Beaucastel cellar in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Valéry wanted to work with Studio Méditerranée, Louis-Antoine Grégo’s agency, for this project. Around the three projects in Nice, Beaucastel and Ibiza, they created a residence/workshop in Nice for architects and craftsmen, united around the concern for responsible construction. They wanted to work with a team of specialists, integrated horizontally from the first stages of the design. Ruedi Krebs, craftsman mason specialising in lime construction, brings us his detailed knowledge for the rehabilitation and implementation of our projects based on the transformation of limestone.
Nicolas Meunier, a builder specialising in adobe, would bring us his expertise on the industrialized compaction compacting of red clays from the plains of Ibiza. Philippe Moirier-Genoud, biologist, would advise us on the natural filtration of rainwater and wastewater. Philippe Clément, engineer, would ensure the optimisation of the projected structural systems.
4.3 Establishing a collective requirement around a common vision - the “embedded energy” of the site
This energy is understood as the emotion, the resonance emitted by the sum total of the human energies involved in the realisation of things, by the desire to transmit know-how in the service of a cause that is greater than the sum of the interests of each individual, and to establish an immanent beauty, detached from immediate aesthetic concerns and understood as the result produced by the concern for work well done and constant attention to the other and to the world. This common vision, in this case responsible construction, then becomes the ferment of the group, to which each person brings an involvement in the service of this vision. Relationships are horizontal, conflicts fade away and the project becomes a life project. A striking example of this “embedded energy” is that of Ellorâ in India; - Figure 2
A village built by several generations and over several centuries from the beginning of the 6th century, entirely and finely built in the rock, descending from ground level in the Charanandri hill. This collective work was only possible at the price of a collective selfless investment, a work done in conscience for the benefit of future generations, the only ones able to see the end of it and therefore to enjoy it. This immanent and disinterested beauty, this ‘embedded energy’, is also perceptible in the century-old fincas of Ibiza.
4.4. Practise humility and listening with local workers
This means including local craftsmen in the construction process. It also means employing local labour for the operation of the buildings.

Figure 1: Cut & Fill
Figure 2: Kailasa Temple, Ellora
