MARXE a+t Restores One of Corme's Last Unaltered Fishermen's Houses with Its Owners as the Builders

Corme-Porto is a small fishing village on the Galician coast, in the municipality of Ponteceso, far from any major city. Its streets once held dozens of traditional fishermen's houses. Few remain intact. A CORMELÁ, a 90 m² renovation by MARXE a+t completed in 2025, takes on one of the last examples in the area that had survived practically unchanged. The work began by removing earlier additions that had distorted the house's character. Only then did the architects decide what to add.

Restorations of vernacular houses often stop at careful conservation, or they bury the original under a contemporary fit-out. This project is more interesting because of how it was built. Unforeseen circumstances turned it into a self-build. The owners and architects worked alongside a small group of local artisans, and local fabricators prefabricated some components and trained the novice builders for the harder assemblies. The result reads as an experiment in details and construction systems. It also tests whether a heritage house can meet current standards of comfort, health and sustainability without giving up what made it worth saving.

A Facade the Village Already Knew

From the lane, the house does not announce a renovation. White render, rubble stone, a granite corbelled balcony and red doors and shutters belong to the same vocabulary as the neighbouring houses. That restraint is deliberate. In a village where so little of the original fabric survives, an intervention that called attention to itself would erase the thing it set out to protect.

The only visible new element outside is a red-framed dormer, and it takes its colour from the existing joinery rather than introducing a new one. At dusk, the stone gable with its lit window and open shutters looks the way a fisherman's house should look. We think that is the right measure of success here. The house's public face stays intact, and the real changes happen inside.

Light and Air from the Roof

The roof does most of the environmental work. The skylights are placed by orientation, not by convenience. A north-facing opening draws on the drier winds, and the southern skylights are shielded from unwanted sun. Together they drive passive ventilation and keep interior temperatures close to comfortable through the year. On the Galician coast, where damp is the constant problem, this matters more than any glazing spec.

Inside, the exposed timber rafters stay visible, and steel tie rods and a vertical strap do their structural job without being hidden. A suspended white bed platform and a metal ladder to the loft make use of the full pitch of the roof. The attic, once probably dead storage, becomes a study with a built-in oak desk set within a granite doorway frame.

Granite as the Room's Furniture

MARXE a+t treat the existing granite as something to build against, not something to cover up. A wall-mounted timber desk runs straight up to a rough stone pier. Doorways keep their heavy granite frames, and new timber doors and oak window frames sit inside them like inserts. A steel stair passes overhead in one view, set clearly apart from the masonry, and the old and new never blend into each other.

This approach is honest, and it is also practical for a self-build. Lightweight timber and steel pieces that fit into existing openings are easier for novice builders to make and install than new masonry or intricate plaster reconstruction.

Thermal Mass and a Single Stove

The double-height room is where the climate strategy becomes visible. A black biomass stove gives supplementary heat, and the thick walls store it, so the old house's thermal inertia becomes part of the heating system. A rough granite oven niche remains in the wall, a reminder that this room has always been organised around fire.

The architects describe using breathable materials to balance moisture, and they monitor performance with simple, low-cost technologies. That last point deserves more attention than it usually gets. Measuring whether a renovation actually performs is still rare in domestic heritage work, and doing it cheaply makes the method something others could copy. The kitchen corner nearby keeps the same economy: a folding timber table, a slatted cabinet and hanging pots, lit by daylight from a skylight beside the stair.

Steel in the Wet Corners

Where water is involved, the material palette changes. Stainless steel counters and basins sit beneath deep granite window recesses fitted with timber casements and shutters. A brushed steel pivot door opens onto a speckled terrazzo floor. Steel is durable and easy to clean, and its industrial finish makes it clear that this is the new layer.

The details are small but carefully chosen: a half-round metal basin, a white arched tap, a round mirror. Nothing tries to look rustic. The contrast between rough stone and machined metal is what lets each one be read clearly.

The Stair as a Built Experiment

The winding oak stair sums up the project's method. Its treads twist through a tight plan between a white plaster wall and a brushed metal panel, with a steel handrail above. At its foot, a granite boulder rests on the terrazzo, a piece of the site left in place inside the house.

A stair like this is one of the most demanding pieces of joinery in any house, and it is just the kind of assembly where local fabricators prefabricated components and coached the owners through installation. Combining industrial prefabrication with on-demand craft support is a model we would like to see used more often, especially in rural areas where skilled labour is scarce and budgets are tight.

Plans and Drawings

The plans show how irregular and thick the original walls are, and how the new furniture and openings work within them rather than squaring them off. The sections show the house stepping down its sloping site, with a loft, stairs, a ladder and a side balcony stacked into the gabled volume. The annotated axonometric is the most telling drawing: red highlights pick out the timber stairs, ladders and metalwork, the elements that were added and self-built, surrounded by small construction diagrams that read almost like an assembly manual.

Why This Project Matters

Coastal Galicia, like many rural areas in Europe, is losing its vernacular housing to neglect on one side and insensitive modernisation on the other. A CORMELÁ offers a third option. It strips away the damaging additions, keeps the stone and the street presence, and inserts a light layer of timber, steel and terrazzo that improves comfort without competing with the original. Its passive strategy depends on the old building's own assets: thick walls, a pitched roof and its orientation to the wind.

The process may be even more significant than the result. A self-build supported by local artisans and prefabricators, and checked with low-cost monitoring, is a model that small towns could realistically adopt. It treats heritage as a working system to understand and adapt, not a relic to embalm. At 90 m², the project is small, but the lesson applies far beyond Corme.

A CORMELÁ Renovation by MARXE a+t. Location: Corme, Spain. Area: 90 m². Year: 2025. Photography: Luis Diaz Diaz.

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