/// Mountain refuge and margers school at Raixa, Bunyola.

The architectural project for the rehabilitation of part of Raixa, sought to locate a new mountain refuge and a stone work (margers) school in one of the most special sets of buildings and ethnographic elements in Mallorca.

It is proposed to recover the owner’s houses and other existing buildings, maintaining the character of the place and the patina of the time, as well as the reading of the original uses and spaces. There is an idea of ​​clarifying space, routes and structures, leading to a functional, welcoming and well-being project for users. We want to make an architecture that serves people and the natural and cultural environment and never the other way around.

The refuge is organized in an outdoor courtyard with service for guests and day visitors with a coffee room and stove on one side, and on the other in the accommodation’s facilities. At the same time both floors receive daytime uses such as reception, living rooms, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, and bedrooms on the upper floor. The new patio breaks the roof canvas giving natural light and ventilation to all traffic spaces. The distribution of the bedrooms allows them to be joined or separated, achieving much more flexibility in the accommodation of groups of visitors.

The intervention is done by walls, vaults and other elements that function by gravity as elements of inertia. Bending elements such as roofs and slabs are rehabilitated with wood as the predominant material, taking advantage of its low energy consumption and the many plastic possibilities of work. The thermal inertia of the laundry water is used to cool the common areas through an exchanger.

The margers school should be a mainly outdoor space. For this reason, we place it among the different buildings to be rehabilitated, allowing it to be a place of learning and dissemination of the work of the margers of Mallorca.