Stefano Boeri Architetti has won the competition for Sa Casa, a new affordable housing complex in Ibiza built around a modular timber system. Developed for Spanish public housing agency Casa 47, the proposal divides roughly 190 apartments among four residential volumes, leaving the center of the site open as a planted communal space. The buildings step and shift across the sloping plot instead of forming one continuous perimeter, creating a series of passages and courtyards that lead toward a public square at the center.
The project is planned for Ca n’Escandell, a large public housing development on the edge of Ibiza Town. Here, Sa Casa occupies a 5,505-square-meter parcel and forms part of a wider neighborhood planned to contain more than 500 protected apartments. The winning scheme was selected from 13 competition entries, with the jury pointing to the way its separated volumes negotiate the terrain and open the housing toward the shared landscape between them.
Stefano Boeri Architetti divides Sa Casa into four residential volumes around a planted center
CLT MODULES GIVE THE APARTMENTS ROOM TO CHANGE
Stefano Boeri Architetti plans the main structural system with cross-laminated timber, with a high degree of prefabrication intended to shorten work on site and reduce construction waste. The logic of the CLT frame extends directly into the apartments. Instead of fixing each unit around one household type, the architects use a modular layout that can be reconfigured as occupants and their needs change over time, including homes adapted for residents with reduced mobility.
With this flexibility, shared work areas and communal rooms can be reorganized within the same architectural system, giving the building a degree of elasticity long after construction is complete. It is a useful idea for public housing, where the people moving through one apartment over decades may have very different ideas of what a home needs to contain.
CLT construction gives the apartments a modular structural system
FOUR BUILDINGS GATHER AROUND A GARDEN
From the outside, the fragmentation gives Sa Casa much of its character. Long timber-framed elevations face one another across planted paths and terraces, while deep balconies introduce another layer between each apartment and the landscape. Mediterranean vegetation runs through the courtyards and continues onto the roofs, where planting becomes part of the environmental strategy as well as the architecture.
The open center is especially important to the proposal. Instead of treating circulation as leftover space between apartment blocks, the architects use it to build a loose sequence from the surrounding neighborhood toward the central square. The buildings frame this route without sealing it off to give residents shared outdoor space while keeping the complex connected to the city around it.
Mediterranean planting moves through the paths and onto the roofs
SHADE, AIR AND WATER BECOME PART OF THE PLAN
To reduce reliance on mechanical cooling within each home, the climate of Ibiza enters the architecture through orientation and cross ventilation. Green roofs add shade and help temper exposed surfaces, while photovoltaic panels provide renewable energy. Rainwater collection and greywater reuse are also integrated into the scheme, with native planting selected to work within the island’s Mediterranean conditions.
Sa Casa is currently an ongoing project, with Stefano Boeri Architetti responsible for the architectural design and SOCOTEC Spain working as local architect and sustainability consultant. The scheme also arrives at a moment when Ibiza faces heavy pressure on its housing supply. Here, the studio’s familiar interest in vegetation moves into a different area: publicly funded rental housing built from repeatable timber pieces, with enough flexibility in the plan to keep changing after residents move in.
deep balconies create shaded outdoor extensions to the apartments
project info:
name: Sa Casa
architect: Stefano Boeri Architetti | @stefanoboeriarchitetti
location: Ibiza, Spain
status: competition winner, ongoing
client: Entidad Estatal de Vivienda, Casa 47
local architect, sustainability strategy: SOCOTEC Spain
design team: Stefano Boeri, Hana Narváez, Silvia Fernández, Nahed Zmeter, Yulia Filatova, Mohamed Hassan Elgendy
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