Mas la Llum on Más Vale Tarde on La Sexta: a straw house as a climate refuge

On 29 July, they came to Mas la Llum to discover our home and film a report about energy efficiency and climate refuges. The report was broadcast on 3 August, and we were especially happy to share something that has been part of our everyday life since we built this house: another way of understanding how we live and inhabit our surroundings.

Because when we talk about natural building, we are not only talking about using natural materials. We are also talking about thinking about the house before building it. Taking into account the climate, orientation, insulation, materials and the way all these elements work together.

A house that works with the climate
Mas la Llum is a house built with straw, wood and earth, following natural building and bioclimatic design principles.

Straw plays a fundamental role as an insulating material. Earth has, among other properties, the ability to help regulate changes in temperature and humidity. And the design of the house aims to make the most of the local climatic conditions in order to be more energy efficient. All of this has a direct impact on indoor comfort.

In summer, when outdoor temperatures rise and the heat becomes extreme, we maintain very comfortable indoor conditions without the need for air conditioning. Temperatures fluctuate between 21ºC and 25ºC both in summer and winter.

This is achieved by designing and building the house with the local climate in mind: daytime and nighttime temperatures, solar exposure, rainfall, wind, and so on. The aim is to make the most of these conditions or minimise their effects in order to maximise indoor comfort and wellbeing.

And this also has an important consequence: we need less energy to achieve comfortable indoor conditions. 

For us, energy efficiency starts long before switching on a heating or cooling system. It starts with the way we think about and design the building.

Natural building is something you live
When we built Mas la Llum, we wanted to experience first-hand the materials and construction systems that made sense to us.
Straw, wood, earth, lime, natural finishes, bioclimatic design… Not as a collection of “eco-friendly” materials, but as part of a different way of building, living and relating to the place.

And after all these years, we are still learning from the house and from the way it responds to climate changes, such as the increase in outdoor nighttime temperatures that we have been experiencing in the area this summer.

Perhaps that is one of the things we like most about Mas la Llum: it is not a theoretical project. It is our home, the house we live in, and it allows us to experiment and learn every day.

What does “climate refuge” really mean?
In recent years, we have increasingly heard about climate refuges. But from our perspective, a climate refuge should not only be a place we go to when temperatures become extreme.

A climate refuge should be every space we inhabit: comfortable, bioclimatic and healthy, because we spend most of our lives inside buildings, in our homes and workplaces.

So we should ask ourselves how we design buildings or, even better, what improvements we can make to existing buildings to increase their climate comfort while using fewer resources and less energy. Bioclimatic architecture starts precisely here: making the most of local conditions and taking the climate into account when designing a building in order to reduce its energy needs.

There is no single solution. Every territory, every climate and every building requires different responses. And taking action is important: redesigning existing buildings to improve their bioclimatic performance and designing new buildings better from the very beginning.

A straw house that is also an experience
For those of you who come to stay at Mas la Llum, all of this is part of the experience, even if you are not specifically coming to learn about natural building.

Sleeping in a room built with straw, wood and earth, waking up to the light of the Matarraña, noticing how the house changes throughout the day or enjoying a comfortable indoor temperature when the heat is intense outside are small things that make bioconstruction stop being a concept and become part of the experience.

And for those of you who are curious to learn more, we also offer training in natural building and sustainability. Because we believe that sharing what we have learned —what has worked and what has not— is what makes the most sense.

Here is the full report
If you did not get to see it on television, we have uploaded the full Más Vale Tarde report so that you can get to know Mas la Llum a little better and discover what lies behind a straw house designed according to natural building and energy-efficiency principles.

You can watch the full report here: YOUTUBE LINK

Thank you to the Más Vale Tarde team for coming to Mas la Llum, for taking an interest in the way we build and for helping us share a message that is becoming increasingly necessary: how we can build and live in a more efficient, more conscious and more connected way.

And if, after watching the report, you feel like experiencing Mas la Llum for yourself, we will be here waiting for you.