Bastidas Architecture Turns a Former Printing Press in Artà into a Courtyard Family Home

Some refurbishments erase a building's working past to make room for domestic comfort. Others keep that past as a set of rooms and leave it there. Bastidas Architecture, led by Gerard Bastidas, has converted a former printing press in Artà into a contemporary family home of roughly 700 m². Completed in 2025, the project keeps the bones of a substantial courtyard house: arched loggias, thick masonry walls, exposed beams and a stone stair. It then turns the whole plan toward a central void holding a palm tree and a long, narrow pool.

What interests us is restraint, though not the timid kind. The architects left the existing arches in place and added a vocabulary of lattice parapets, crisp plaster and steel-framed glazing. That vocabulary reads as an extension of the house, not a commentary on it. The courtyard is the plan's real engine. It supplies light, outlook, water and shade to rooms on every level, and it gives a building with an industrial past the slow rhythm of a Mediterranean home.

Starting From an Overgrown Shell

The black and white images of the house before the works are worth studying. The courtyard was choked with palms and shrubs. The loggia and stone stair were present but half hidden. The entrance hall had a checkerboard floor and dark ceiling beams, with drawings spread across a table. The architecture was already there; it simply could not be seen.

That changes how we should read the finished project. The main move is clarification, not invention. Most of the design effort went into deciding what to uncover, what to lighten and where to add.

A Courtyard That Does the Heavy Lifting

The courtyard is a compact composition: plastered arched walls, lattice balustrades, an orange tree and a slim pool running along one edge. The pool works like a reflecting line more than a swimming lane. It is an urban response to water, one that cools and animates the space without taking it over.

On one side, two tiers of tall steel-framed windows sit above open doors, so the facade becomes almost entirely porous. Elsewhere, a timber-framed glazed gallery frames the palm against the arches. The mix of steel and timber suggests the architects tuned each opening to its role. They did not apply a single new window type across the house.

Arcades, Loggias and the Lattice Screen

The groin-vaulted loggia is the house at its most persuasive. It has a built-in cushioned bench, arched openings toward a gravel garden and a tiled plunge pool within reach. It is an outdoor room in the full sense, sheltered enough to use at midday and open enough to feel like the garden.

The triangular lattice screens recur along terraces and parapets. They are the clearest new signature in the project. They filter views and sun, and they draw shadow patterns on the rendered walls. They also borrow from the long regional habit of perforated screening without copying any specific historic pattern. Used at this frequency, the motif could easily turn decorative. Here it holds because it always does a job: guarding an edge, screening a view or breaking up the light.

Terraces Facing the Town

The house steps up to small terraces and a roof terrace that looks across tiled rooftops toward a hilltop church. These spaces are modest: a folding chair, a round table, a lattice parapet. That modesty is right. The view is the program, and the architecture stays out of its way.

For a dense town fabric, the roof terrace is also a strategic gain. It adds usable outdoor area without spending ground, and it connects the inward-looking courtyard house to the wider town around it.

The Stair as Sculpture

The stair is where the refurbishment allows itself some flourish. A curving white plaster balustrade rises over limestone treads. Its handrail is smoothed into one continuous form, and a skylight at the top throws geometric shadows down the stairwell walls.

We like how the stair absorbs light rather than displaying material. There is no polished metal and no feature lighting, only plaster, stone and daylight. The stair core runs through every floor of the plan, so this choice sets the tone for the whole house.

Living Rooms Under White Beams

In the living spaces, the ceiling beams are painted white. That one decision lightens rooms that the archival photographs show were heavy and dark. Arched wall niches and a recessed fireplace give the long dining room a sense of depth. A view through a plastered arch toward the stair and a round window links the rooms visually.

The furnishing is calm: oak, linen, round timber tables. That suits the project. The house does not need objects to prove it is contemporary; the light already does that.

Bedrooms and the Reclaimed Attic

The bedrooms rely on tall windows with folding shutters and, in one case, three arched openings with white shutters under exposed beams. The empty attic image, with its four arched windows and stained concrete floor, shows the raw material the architects started from at the top of the house. A space that once felt left over now carries the same quality of light as the rest of the home.

Plans and Drawings

The plans show how disciplined the organisation is. A central stair anchors every level. The courtyard palm and pool stay constant from the lowest level to the roof plan, and the rooms wrap around that void. The ground floor holds a garage, a long dining room and a walled garden with four trees. The first floor lines bedrooms and bathrooms along one side. The top floor gathers a bedroom, study and lounge around the stair.

The sections are the most revealing drawings. They show basement vaults below the main floors, a stepped stair core and a tall glazed wall facing the courtyard. The coloured sketch section, with its glazed greenhouse bay and yellow facade, and the perspective of the vaulted arcade with seated figures, suggest a design process driven by atmosphere as much as by survey.

Why This Project Matters

Many historic town houses in Spain sit empty or get gutted behind their facades. This project argues for a third route: keep the structure and the spatial logic, then let a few precise additions change how the house is lived in. The lattice screens, the painted beams, the new glazing and the slim pool are each simple moves. Together they turn a dim, overgrown building into a home organised around light and water.

It also reminds us that the courtyard type still works for contemporary family life when it is taken seriously. Bastidas Architecture made the void the most important room in the house, so every floor benefits from it. For architects working with dense historic fabric, that is a lesson worth more than any single detail.

Former Printing Press Refurbishment by Bastidas Architecture (lead architect Gerard Bastidas), Artà, Spain. Area: 700 m². Completed: 2025. Photographs by Neus Pastor.

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