Claudio Silverstrin and John Pawson, Neuendorf House, Courtyard Enclosure, Mallorca, Balearic Islands

The Neuendorf House in Mallorca was designed by John Pawson in partnership with Claudio Silvestrin. Entry to the house involves a theatrical descent between narrow walls past a basin set in a full-height groove. The approach presents, with its acoustics, a calibrated experience of enclosure and compression against the vast landscape that is the house’s context.

The courtyard’s composition si emphatically vertical. The exaggerated height of the walls is dramatised by the narrow slot whose edges emphasizes the wall’s thickness. A modest contrasting horizontal form is added by a bench set very low to the ground. The contrast between the landscape outside and the courtyard space is underlined by the view of the sky above and the landscape seen through the wall’s gap.