Carlo Ratti on Ensamble Studio’s Can Terra, Menorca
ON A RECENT TRIP to the Spanish island of Menorca, I chose to stay not in a sleek hotel or a whitewashed finca, but in a cave called Can Terra. The choice felt appropriate: The Balearic island is dotted with remnants of the Talayotic civilization, whose settlements took the form of caves and beehive-like stone domes. At the moment, architecture is contending more directly with human prehistory—from Amin Taha’s 15 Clerkenwell Close in London, its limestone blocks layered with fossil shells, to Anne Holtrop’s buildings in Bahrain, cast from eroded ground. Can Terra, Catalan for “house of earth,” offers a study of how far this impulse might take us.