Peratallada Castle

The Peratallada Castle, a heritage building dated from the X century a.C., is where we find this fabulous and unique garden of a private villa. A magic refuge place, in the heard of a village that preserve a clear vestige of it’s medieval past in every street.

The Castle, located in the Baix Empordà (Catalonia, Spain) is considered (for it’s historic-artistic value) a National heritage building. The garden is dominated with the presence of the surrounding stones, dated from the tenth century (a.C.).

Our commission was to design the garden and landscape of this castle, used as a summer private villa. The site had a complex topography with almost 2 m drop from the street level to the house door. We create three different platforms to solve this issue. A big Acacia hundred-year-old tree is another main actor, it dominates the space with it’s vertical presence and it structures the layout, becoming the centre of the intervention.

The three horizontal platforms are made of Turkish white stone combined with the vertical concrete walls with wood texture finish: horizontal plane is conformed by assembling pieces, the vertical plane is build by a continuous formless material.

The stone pavement is composed by pieces of 7 cm to 15 cm width. This is thanks to reusing some stock waste material of one local quarry. The stock had many different pieces sizes, having to draw each stone one by one of the whole project as a big puzzle. The special pieces as the water drain or the shower, in order to understand the natural movement of the water by the gravity, are sculpt pieces with modern CNC machines, merging tradition with innovation.

The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering are perfectly integrated in the design, like the lighting and the plugs (they are built-in the stone bench), or the stair lighting (built-in the steel rail section).

The main actor of the intervention is the pool, a sheet of water permanently moving, the amazing surroundings play a big role in the reflexion of the water and the sound creates a magic atmosphere. The water overflow, a cascade over the concrete wall.

Looking forward to produce a sustainable garden, the entire project is conceived to recollect the rainwater, even from the house roof, and recollect it in a medieval well dig out in the natural stone soil, more than 9 meters above the ground level. This well is used to water all the plants of the garden.

MESURA Studio

Collaborator: Dr. Joan Albert Adell
Construction Company: Burgos Gasull
Marble: Kendra
Lights: Adymus