The interiors look like the cellars of a modernist mansion or freakishly rectangular caves, made almost comfortable by a cushion or mattress. With glimpses of nondescript farmland outside, the appearance is at once modern and primitive. But this unorthodox habitat is the work of the Madrid- and Boston-based practice Ensamble. Known as Ca’n Terra, meaning “House of the Earth” in Catalan, the series of spaces is another fascinating experiment in the fundamental principles of dwelling, as pursued by the firm’s two partners: Antón García-Abril (RECORD 2004 Design Vanguard page 132) and a professor at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, and Débora Mesa, who holds the Ventulett Chair in Architectural Design at Georgia Tech.
Established in 2000, Ensamble has pursued two divergent tendencies in construction. On one side, the architects are technologically avant-garde. They built a factory to make prefabricated housing in the Madrid suburbs, but have also explored man’s primitive relationship to nature and human habitation.
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