Casa Al Pradet
Vilamacolum, Spain
Casa Al Pradet is the architect Clara Crous's own family home in Vilamacolum, a small town in the Alt Empordà in Catalonia, on the last plot on its street. The plot is a triangle against farmland, and the land was called Al Pradet before it became building land. She designed the house and largely built it with her partner, Carles Torracabota Bosch, who works in digital fabrication in timber and comes from a farming family. The light timber frame was machined in the workshop beforehand, and the build started after the maize harvest, when labour was free. The house is lifted more than a metre above the ground against damp and flooding, closed to the north against the tramuntana wind, and made of stepped modules of different shapes and heights, after the outbuildings added to Catalan farmhouses as families grew. It covers 235 square metres and was completed in 2024. It won the Arquitectures category of the 26th Premis d'Arquitectura de les Comarques de Girona 2024, an award of the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya, ex aequo with another house.
The card shows the dining end of the kitchen and living room, the first frame of Dwell's post: a timber-lined room under a glulam beam, a leaning timber ladder up to the loft, a high window with a bookshelf beneath it, and a panel of green and white geometric cement tiles set into the polished concrete floor. The tiles were designed by the graphic designer Marta Montenegro and made by hand by Mosaics Torra, which says they "define the kitchen and dining room of this wooden house in the Empordà". In the studio's own words: "La fusta, la tova, la rajola hidràulica i el morter de calç són els materials protagonistes que conformen la Casa Al Pradet." Timber, adobe, hydraulic tile and lime mortar, that is, are the lead materials of the house.
Clara Crous Arquitectura
Clara Crous Arquitectura is the studio of the architect Clara Crous Fort, working in the Empordà and on the Costa Brava on full refurbishments and new houses, in architecture and interior design. Its team includes the architects Jordi Collell and Amanda Soler. Casa Al Pradet is the architect's own home.
Architecture Clara Crous (@claracrousarq). Photography Montse Capdevila (@montsecapdevila_). Story @gracebernard. Seen via @dwellmagazine.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched September 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.