Cal Guerxo
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
Cal Guerxo is a an ambitious renovation project aiming to bring a medieval residence to life by converting it into an inspiration for beautiful, sustainable and inclusive design. A home that functions as elegantly and efficiently as a flower, informed by the characteristics of its bio-region. Capturing all of its water and energy from the sky while operating efficiently for maximum beauty. An inspiring call for action to restore our relationship with nature.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Cal Guerxo, secreted away in the Spanish Pyrenees, 3 hours from Barcelona and 100 kilometers from the French border, an ambitious renovation has brought a medieval residence to life to become an inspiration representing the new culture regarding the places we inhabit and our relationship with the natural environment. Cal Guerxo blends a half millennium of history with the new sustainable culture we need to guide the future of our built environment.
Our aim was to create a home that functions as elegantly and efficiently as a flower, informed by the characteristics of its bioregion, capturing all of its water and energy from the sky while operating efficiently for maximum beauty.
The renovation of Cal Guerxo dramatically raises the bar from a paradigm of doing less harm to one in which we view our role as a steward and co-creator of a true sustainable future. We applied the most advanced measures of sustainability in the built environment today. The aim of our project is to transform how we think about every single act of design and construction as an opportunity to positively impact the greater community of life and the cultural fabric of our human communities in a beautiful way.
The result is a place with greater biodiversity where nature invites us to collaborate. A home as an expression of beauty providing a deeper understanding of climate, culture and place. A place where we re-align our food and transportation systems. A place where soil health increases and where one develops a more profound sense of what it means to be a citizen of a plant where resources have to be cared for and where opportunities provided should be shared fairly and equitably.
Cal Guerxo is a call for action in support for a new narrative of interconnection to restore our fractured relationships with ourselves, our communities and nature. This project is intended to be a role model for society for redefining the future of the built environment.
Key objectives for sustainability
When we started this project, we wanted to move beyond a merely less bad version of the homes we currently build and we asked a simple and profound question: what does good really look like? How can our design and construction process result in a better place with greater biodiversity and social equity, an expression of beauty, a deeper understanding of climate, culture and place? How do we re-align our food and transportation systems. How do we increase the health of the soil and our own health? How do we develop a more profound sense of what it means to be a citizen of this planet? This resulted in the following key sustainable objectives and outcomes:
- The project respects the vernacular architecture while at the same time proofing for the future crises our society faces. Net positivity ensures no negative environmental impact. Connection with nature through biophilic design and permaculture design principles form the ideological core of the project.
- The land has been restored intentionally to create spaces to connect intimately with nature: tend gardens, harvest food, enjoy a sauna ritual, plunge in an organic pool and stimulate biodiversity.
- Straight lines are minimized in favor of round ones; wood, clay, straw, stone, sand and clay are the main materials creating warm textures. The organic forms and materials render a peaceful grounded atmosphere and a positive, vital life energy.
- Passive solar is used for heating while active solar energy captured with a rooftop PV array creates an energy surplus.
- Rainwater is the only source for water. We closed the hydrologic cycle, live generously consuming 44 liters per person per day. All effluent is filtered by a constructed wetland and returned to the land, watering fruit trees and vegetables along the way.
- The total carbon footprint for the renovation was reduced to 2,000 kg CO2E by using natural materials and reusing as much on-site material as possible.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The Cal Guerxo project recognizes the need for beauty and the connection to nature as a precursor to caring enough to preserve, conserve, and serve the greater good. As a society, we are often surrounded by ugly and inhumane physical environments. The key to creating beautiful buildings is to embrace a biophilic design process that emphasizes that people and nature are connected and the connection to place, climate, culture and community is crucial to creating a beautiful building. The aesthetics of the project are inspired by the beauty of nature. The use of natural materials such as wood, stone, clay, straw, lime and sand create a grounded earth energy which strongly impacts those staying at Cal Guerxo.
The outdoor spaces consist of a mixed mosaic of spaces integrating the beauty of the surrounding landscape through the use of natural materials such as wood and stone in combination with a large variety of vegetation that invites a large number of non-human living beings to share this place. The presence of a living organic pool (including a frog-staircase), an outdoor sauna and a fire-circle allows for shared outdoor experiences of beauty and wellbeing, while a series of secluded spaces allow for reading or contemplating while smelling aromatic plants, watch butterflies and dragonflies and listen to the serenades of the rossignol bird.
Cal Guerxo includes a number of design features intended for human delight only. The rainwater, prior to entering the water tanks runs inside a canal in the kitchen floor filled with local river stones leading to a deeper connection with water on rainy days. The sunspace provides large windows on the south-west side corner of the house, elevating the connection with the surrounding mountains to a spiritual experience of beauty.
Key objectives for inclusion
Cal Guerxo makes its experience of beauty and the deeper connection with nature in our homes inclusive for young people that may not have the financial means to learn this through paid courses. We provide learning opportunities through a concept of purposeful volunteering. Besides providing food and lodging, we engage with volunteers through workshops on truly sustainable development. Over the last 12 months we hosted 24 volunteers, aged between 19 and 35 years, who stayed between 1 and 3 months during which we hold regular workshops where we apply sustainable thinking to their personal projects helping with their mindset needed to develop their future projects in a true sustainable way and by providing them with frameworks allowing them to take their projects to a more conscious level. Through their experience at Cal Guerxo, they develop an active agency with a clearer purpose about what they can do to make a positive contribution to the world through their individual projects. Each of the volunteers was asked to reflect on what they had learned and how their experience was during their stay at Cal Guerxo. Below are some extracts from what they wrote showing that the impact is real:
“The weekly sessions on positive thinking and design are insightful and bring new perspectives. There was so much to learn and one month was not long enough to take it all in!”
“It was an absolutely wonderful month. Everything that I experienced and learnt is going to shape how I move forward in life.”
“The level of my vital energy with which I have felt all these weeks has been spectacular”
“I am very happy to have come to this magical place, everything is wonderful! This volunteering leaves me with a lot of knowledge, the importance of nature in our lives, the way to adapt to it without causing harm, a sustainable and regenerative lifestyle.”
Results in relation to category
The solutions implemented at Cal Guerxo focus on the establishment of a mutually beneficial relationship between humans and nature. The solutions related to biodiversity and water and soil conservation resulted in some of the following solutions:
- The rain captured by the roof runs through a canal that runs through the kitchen before the water reaches the rainwater harvesting tanks. This provides a visual and auditory experience that reminds us how precious nature´s gifts are.
- All water needs are met with rainwater which is returned to the land without contamination. In that sense we only borrow rainwater and we make sure it is returned to increase the fertility of the land.
- All greywater leaving the house is filtered naturally in a constructed wetland where yellow irises and purple loosestrife thrive while attracting a diversity of butterflies.
- No black water is generated. A comfortable dry toilet composts our solid waste which is returned to the land as fertilizer.
- All urine is separated and re-used to provide nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, key nutrients that plants need to grow.
- Worms help out with the composting and create compost tea and rich humus that boosts plant growth.
- By recycling all or our waste-streams with the help of nature, the fertility of the soils is increased and nature returns an abundance of organic fruits, nuts and vegetables.
- By creating plant guilds, nature helps us to manage pests resulting in organic food without the use of any toxic pesticides.
- The organic pool provides a haven of peace not only for humans but also for the many insects, reptiles and birds that visit the vegetated regeneration zones. Pools can be places that create conditions for all life to thrive allowing nature to manifest its beauty for us to enjoy and respect.
- Next to the regeneration zone, an insect hotel surrounded by a variety of flowers stimulates the biodiversity at Cal Guerxo.
How Citizens benefit
From the start, the intention of the Cal Guerxo project was to make a contribution to civil society by providing an inspiration and sharing the outcomes of the project. Being an inspiration to others so the design and construction solutions can be implemented in other projects is where the real purpose lies. This is being achieved in a variety of ways:
- Cal Guerxo is a host for purposeful volunteering. This program allows young people from all over the world to learn how to find ways to make a positive contribution to society and nature. These volunteers stay between 1 and 3 months and they learn hands-on design and construction skills as well as design solutions and strategies for making homes net-positive. Cal Guerxo can host up to 12 people comfortable and intends to continue to provide these opportunities for others in the future. The reactions we received from volunteers clearly show that their stay has impacted them deeply and will allow them to become agents of change.
- We provided an online webinar about Cal Guerxo in February last year to which over 900 people registered. During this webinar we shared the net positive outcomes of Cal Guerxo and shared the solutions we applied. We plan on continuing providing online webinars including a variety of topics related to designing and building for net positive carbon, water, energy and biodiversity. Many participants have provided feedback on how this inspires them to start working from a paradigm that focuses on making positive contributions instead of merely reducing negative impacts.
- We also organize regular open house days in collaboration with local organizations. We have worked with a local school to educate children on positive design and invited local people for guided tours.
We plan on continuing and expanding these experiences to reach as many people as possible so that the work we have done can be multiplied and together we can create the new culture of interconnection.
Innovative character
Starting the design of a place from a different mindset is usually not part of the mainstream practice. We started the design by including a facilitated exploration and discovery phase. During this phase we asked ourselves the question: “Instead of a world that is merely a less bad version of the one we currently have, what does good design look like?” We observed how nature behaves in this place and how we could establish a mutually beneficial relationship with nature. We also explored how the project could make a meaningful contribution beyond its project boundaries.
In mainstream practice we tend to focus on the tools and technology we need to design and build. By applying a design process which explores our beliefs and mindset and allows us to align our worldviews among participants in design, we were able to co-create a different, innovative process. Once our mindsets are aligned and after an in depth exploration of our values and beliefs, we co-created the principles of a different design process. Once our mindsets and process are clear, both tools and technology can be incorporated purposefully.
This process is referred to as Regenerative Design and by applying this process to the development of this home, we dramatically raise the bar from a paradigm of doing less harm to one in which we view our role as a steward and co-creator of a true sustainable future. The technologies and tools used were appropriate for the purpose of the project and for the environment.
It is our belief that money, technology and tools are not the issue. They exist. It is the mindset from which we work and the process we apply that will allow us to create beautiful, sustainable and inclusive spaces. This innovative process allowed us to make that happen and led me personally to become a regenerative practicioner and be a resource for other projects that want to implement this regenerative design process.
