Kinship of a lost rural time.
41°09’47.2″N 1°06’29.5″E.
A very big hidden plot at a five minute walk from the centre of Reus. In the middle of the site, a self-built country house. In the beginning, it was in the rural outskirts of town. Some worker’s retreat to spend weekends, summers, and grow vegetables. Since then, it has been surrounded by all sorts of suburban and urban constructions. It still keeps its quiet, peasant atmosphere. The presence of quite tall apartment blocks on the northern and north-western side protects the site from the strong Mestral winds, and shades it during the hot summer afternoons. Surrounded by this slight geological ring, a microclimate unfolds. We could take advantage of our neighbour’s accidental gift by using some lighter construction techniques and opening up towards the western sun. In here, the city erases more than it builds, and it shelters more than it civilises.
The JEC´s late parents bought this mas many years ago. They spent the second part of their life taking care of it. The father, using his skills as a watchmaker, patiently assembled additions, welding, screwing and growing all kinds of rooms, huts, shacks, sheds, porches, fig trees, clocks, strange plants, mono radios and shades: An outdoors abode, a second house around the former one-floor self-built construction. The house was in a perpetual state of construction, a never-ending laborious enjoyment for its dwellers. And then in 2016 the father died, and the place was empty.