Dezanove House

The Ría de Arousa is the largest of the Rías Baixas, the drowned river valleys that cut into the southwest coast of Galicia, and one of the most productive shellfish waters in Europe. Its surface is dotted with bateas, floating wooden platforms from which mussels grow on ropes hung into the tide. A Pobra do Caramiñal sits on the shore of the ría, a working fishing town in the green, rain-fed Atlantic Spain that has little in common with the dry Mediterranean south. The water is cold and clear, the hills behind it are wooded, and Santiago de Compostela is forty minutes inland. This is a coast most travellers pass over on their way somewhere warmer, which is much of its appeal.

The house takes its name from the act of watching those platforms: its full title is mirando ás bateas, looking at the bateas. Iñaki Leite, a Galician architect trained in A Coruña with further study in London, designed it in two parts. An open living level turns outward to the water, its floors, walls and ceiling lined in wood; a sleeping wing turns inward, its concrete rooms closing behind folding timber shutters. The cladding is the estuary's own material returned to land: batea beams pulled from the water after more than twenty-five years of mussel farming, then halved to expose two faces, the rough weathered outer face set to the façade and the smooth inner face kept for furniture and finishes. The house holds the highest energy rating in Spain and took a sustainability mention at the 2016 Galicia Architecture Awards. Leite ran the project end to end as designer, site director and furniture-maker, which is why the material logic holds all the way from the outside wall to the table.