Javier Barba Living with Nature

From his office in Barcelona, Javier Barba travels the world designing houses and resorts. Here are a dozen of the best, located in Spain, Portugal and the Greek Islands, in Java and Baja, California. Barba is a leading proponent of bioclimatic architecture, orienting houses to take advantage of a view, pull in natural light and shut out strong sun, and using their mass to absorb heat during the day and release it at night. He has burrowed into hillsides, landscaped rooftops, and used quarries and overhanging rocks to shelter his houses, with the goal of reducing energy consumption and blurring the divide between building and landscape. 'All architects should design bioclimatically, because it is the nature of architecture to relate humans to the earth and the sky, ' he observes. 'You hope that the more intensely you engage the sight, the happier the client will be.'