Mas Torrent · Garrotxa · 1342 / 2024

A tower, drawn before it was touched.

Casa is a small practice of architects and masons restoring stone buildings in the Pyrenean foothills. We survey every wall by hand, keep what still works, and add only what the building asks for.

Read the sheet Send us a building

A three-storey rubble-stone house with a tiled hip roof among chestnut and oak trees

Section A–A · 1:50 Scroll to cut Sheet 01 / 06

00 — BriefMas TorrentOlot, Girona

A fourteenth-century watch tower, a farmhouse grown around it over four centuries, and forty years of rain through an open roof.

The commission

The family who inherited Mas Torrent asked for one thing: make it a house again without making it new. The tower had lost its roof in 1981; the farmhouse was held up by ivy.

We spent the first year only drawing.

Stone farm buildings with tiled roofs in a wooded valley below the mountains — Fig. 01 — The valley, from the north1:2500

0First record

0Stones numbered

0Stone reused

0Bags of cement

01 — SurveyNorth elevation1:100

Layer 1 · OutlineScale 1:100

Measured by hand, before any scanner.

A tape, a plumb bob and a drawing board on the terrace. Three of us spent eleven days on the tower and drew each face at 1:20 where we stood.

Rubble-stone wall rising to a timber balcony under a deep eave

Fig. 02 — East corner, 2019Before

Every opening is a date.

Blocked arches, re-cut jambs and a Gothic slit window revealed four building campaigns, from the 1342 watch tower to a farmhouse window enlarged in 1790.

A narrow window with a dressed-stone frame set in a rubble wall, overgrown with vines

Fig. 03 — Slit window, south facec. 1400

A census of 4,212 stones.

Each stone on the north face was numbered and graded: sound, loose or lost. Only six percent needed replacing, all with stone picked from the same fields.

Close view of a weathered stone wall with a small window and dressed surround

Fig. 04 — Coursing, north faceGraded

It leans eleven centimetres. We let it.

Rather than straighten the tower, we tied it: four chestnut ring-beams and lime grout injected into the core. None of it shows from outside.

Empty attic room with a stone floor, timber ceiling and a single small window

Fig. 05 — Third floor, ring-beam level+9.10

Then, and only then, notes.

Once the drawing agrees with the building, we annotate. Nothing is designed before this point. The porch in chestnut is the only new element on this face.

02 — The SheetPlans, sections, fragmentsA-02 → A-08

One board, read left to right.

We present each building the way we draw it: plan, section and the photographs that explain them, pinned side by side on a single sheet.

A-02 Ground floor plan1:100

Stone house with timber windows half hidden in green climbing plants

A-03 West front, after2024

A-04 · Notes on the porch

The only new thing is made of wood.

A chestnut frame stands a hand's width off the old wall, bolted to nothing. If it is taken down in a hundred years, the stone will not know it was there.

Joints are pegged, not glued. Tiles on its roof came off the tower in 1981 and waited in the barn.

reversible — always.

A-04 Specification—

A rubble stone wall with a brick relieving arch opening onto a stream

A-05 Relieving arch, mill wallBrick, 1790

A-06 Section B–B1:100

Sunlit rubble wall with a small square niche and a window opening

A-07 Salt niche, kitchen wallKept as found

Stone steps climbing between rubble houses to an arched passage

A-08 Approach from the village—

03 — MaterialsFour, and only fourSourced within 30 km

Stone, lime, chestnut, clay.

The palette was set in 1342. We kept it. Every material on site can be repaired by the next mason with the same hands and the same tools, and none of it needs a factory.

Dry-laid wall of rounded basalt and limestone stones in warm and grey tones

M-01

Field stone

Type: Basalt & limestone
Reused: 86%
Laid in: NHL 3.5 lime

Close-up of pale limestone blocks bedded in soft lime mortar

M-02

Hot lime

Mixed: On site, by hand
Sand: River Fluvià
Cement: None, anywhere

Timber roof structure of dark beams and posts under warm board sarking

M-03

Chestnut

From: Montseny, green-cut
Joints: Oak pegs
Finish: Left to silver

Stacks of salvaged terracotta roof tiles against a weathered stone wall

M-04

Salvaged tile

Count: 9,400 recovered
Stored: Barn, 1981–2022
New: Only on the porch

04 — PhasesFive years, five campaigns2019 – 2024

0102030405

/05

2019 · Ruin

What the rain left.

No roof, two floors collapsed into the cellar, and a fig tree growing out of the east wall. The walls themselves were sound.

2020 · Consolidation

Holding the walls.

Lime grout injected into the core, loose stones rebedded by number, the fig tree cut and its roots left to rot out slowly.

2021 · Roof

A hat, before anything else.

Chestnut trusses on the ring-beams and 9,400 old tiles laid back. For the first time in forty years, the inside was dry.

2022 · Timber

Floors and a stair, inserted.

New floors hang between the old beam pockets. The stair is a free-standing chestnut frame that never touches the stone.

2024 · Inhabited

A house again.

The family moved in at the first frost. The fire in the hall was lit in the same hearth as in the 1790 inventory.

A roofless ruined stone building standing in tall dry grass

Consolidated stone walls with empty arched window openings against a forest

Timber roof trusses and rafters over a rubble stone gable with a small window

A timber staircase rising inside a stone tower

A lit stone fireplace in a room with timber beams and a plank door

Photographic record · Mas Torrent

05 — DetailsDrawn at 1:5Kept, repaired, added

The small things hold the big ones.

A restoration is decided in its details. These three took longer to agree on than the roof.

An arched timber door set deep into a rough stone wall with ferns

voussoirs, reset oak door, re-hung

The cellar door arch

Seven voussoirs had slipped. We propped the arch, lifted them out, numbered them and set them back in lime, in the same order.

A weathered timber window frame set in a stone wall

frame kept

Windows, repaired

Rotten sills spliced with new chestnut. The old glass, where it survived, went back in.

Stone arches and columns of a shaded cloister opening onto sunlight

capital, cleaned

The arcade

Cleaned with water and soft brushes only. The soot on the capitals was kept. It is part of the record.

A restoration is a conversation with whoever laid the first stone. Our job is to listen more than we speak.

Studio principle, pinned above every drawing board

Stone wall and timber balcony under a deep eave, seen from below — Fig. 09 — East balcony2024

06 — CommissionWe take on four buildings a yearGarrotxa · Ripollès · Osona

Send us a building.

Tell us where it stands and what is left of it. If it is within reach, two of us will come and draw it before we talk about anything else.