Marxe a+t restores the last mariñeira house in Corme-Porto, on the Costa da Morte, adding a new contemporary layer

Corme-Porto looks out to sea from a hillside of narrow streets and steep slopes, in the A Coruña municipality of Ponteceso. It is one of those villages where fishing has organised, for generations, not only the economy but also the shape of the house. The traditional Galician mariñeira dwelling answers a single problem, building a great deal on very little land, and it solves it with a type recognisable along the whole coast: narrow, elongated plots, houses with a narrow façade and great depth, gable roofs. The narrowness of the plot was historically compensated for with an exterior stone staircase, the patín, which made it possible to gain an independent access floor without taking useful surface away from the interior; and with wooden or stone balconies that, over time, in the larger urban centres, evolved into the glazed galerías that today identify Galician coastal architecture.

The house of Corme-Porto does not reproduce this type of dwelling in every feature. It has no patín, and its balcony displays a simpler solution of metal railing, typical of the more modest architecture. What it does maintain, and with extraordinary purity, is the chromatic logic of these façades: the white of lime combined with colour, traditionally applied with the surplus of the paint used to protect the hulls of the boats. Hence the red that runs along doors and windows, a colour of the sea rather than of the architect, which the studio Marxe a+t decides to preserve and emphasise as the house’s mark of identity.

That humble character, far from diminishing the value of the house, is precisely what makes it exceptional. It is one of the last mariñeira houses that remain unaltered in Corme-Porto, in the A Coruña municipality of Ponteceso, an example of vernacular architecture of great documentary value, witness to a way of dwelling that in the rest of the village barely remains standing.

A new layer over the essential

From the outset, developers and architects approach the project as an exercise in balance between respect for the pre-existing structure, with the requirements arising from its heritage listing, and the intention of a contemporary proposal that genuinely improves the house’s living conditions. The aim is to achieve the greatest possible degree of adaptation to current standards of comfort, health and sustainability, understanding the intervention as a new layer that enhances what was already valuable in the original construction.

That logic is recognisable in every recovered detail: the granite surrounds of doors and windows, left exposed where they were once hidden; the original access opening, now fitted with a Dutch door following the model of traditional rural doors; the stone washbasin turned into a sink, its taps left exposed over the granite mass itself. The new contemporary layer, resolved in lime, chestnut wood and stainless steel, frames the stone without competing with it.

A supervised self-build process

Owing to various circumstances, common in building works far from large cities, the rehabilitation is carried out as a self-build process in which the developers surround themselves with a select group of local craftspeople and manufacturers, who collaborate at specific points in the execution. The result is a process of learning and experimentation with details and construction systems that combine artisanal and industrialised procedures, overcoming the false dichotomy that usually opposes traditional trades to industry and prefabrication.

That group of local manufacturers and craftspeople prefabricates part of the building’s components and supports the novice builders at specific points during the most complex assembly processes, instructing them so that they can complete the rest of the process on their own. Everything is carried out with local materials and knowledge: the stonework by Ricardo Antelo, the metal carpentry by Forxa Chago and Alemet, the chestnut wood by Maderas Siero, the terrazzo poured in situ. Despite the effort involved in carrying out a project of this kind, and the administrative difficulties inherent in fitting it into the current legal framework, the process proves especially satisfying for the architects, who for the first time can experiment with systems that a conventional project does not allow, demonstrating their technical and economic viability.

Passive strategies against Atlantic humidity

In Atlantic climates such as that of the Costa da Morte, the greatest challenge in achieving a healthy and comfortable environment in a stone house is humidity. The architects have resolved it with passive measures: a design carefully considered from a hygrothermal point of view, which favours the breathability of the materials, and a skylight facing north that makes it possible to schedule ventilation by taking advantage of the driest winds. Other skylights, located on the south slope of the roof and protected from direct sunlight, help keep the house close to thermal comfort throughout the year, a balance completed by the occasional energy input of a biomass stove that makes use of the thermal inertia of the walls.

The whole system is monitored and controlled with low-cost and low-tech technologies, in the conviction that the simplest and most accessible solutions can also be the most effective and resilient.

A house that is lived in once again

In Corme-Porto, the house is once again part of the village’s life. The rubble-stone walls still look out towards the harbour, the red carpentry recalls the colour of the hulls that were once painted with the same paint, and an architecture that came close to disappearing without leaving any documentary trace finds, in this new contemporary layer, a reason to remain standing.

Project: A Cormelá.
Location: Corme-Porto (Ponteceso). A Coruña.
Completed: 2025
Architecture. Design and execution: Marxe a+t.
Architects: Natalia Alvaredo, Javier Rocamonde, Aurora Gil Méndez.
Structural advice: Escuadría.
Site management: Juan Leis.
Photography, finished work: Luís Díaz Díaz.
Photography, previous state: Antía Castro Vázquez.
Execution: MARXE a+t y Manuel Rocamonde.
Metal carpentry: Forxa Chago, Alemet. Stonework: Ricardo Antelo. Wood carpentry details: José Manuel – Pombercar. Arnela table cabinetmaking: Frank Buschmann. Diamond System: Roberto. In-situ terrazzo: Alejo. Chestnut wood: Maderas Siero, Hijos de Vicente Suárez. Electrician: Dámaso. Electricity and ventilation: Kilovatio. Roofing: Tejas Verea. Biomass stove: Chimeneas Quento. Lime plastering: Kerakoll, Revestimientos Hipólito. Rothoblaas: Anyra Keller. Insulation and membranes: Maderas Besteiro. Lighting: Perez Antolín. Wooden windows and doors: Estelar.

Marxe a+t

Marxe a+t was born in Galicia in 2023 as a natural evolution of Bivaque, the itinerant studio founded in 2014 by architects Natalia Alvaredo and Javier Rocamonde, which for nearly a decade moved between Barcelona, Santiago de Compostela and Monforte, weaving a transdisciplinary practice recognised in more than a dozen national and international competitions, among them Europan 15 and 16, Nusos i Cruïlles (AMB) and the Bob Adams Prize in Urbanism and Town Regional Planning. Joining that trajectory since Marxe’s founding is architect Aurora Gil Méndez, who brings to the team a perspective shaped between A Coruña and Rome.

Marxe a+t develops projects for the improvement of the habitat by bringing out the value of cultural and natural heritage. Its work moves with a trans-scalar outlook, attentive to the overlap between complementary realities: the rural and the urban, the public and the private, the productive and the reproductive. That attention translates into a practice centred on urban and territorial regeneration and on the rehabilitation of the built heritage, where each proposal reveals the potential for improvement and the latent values of what already exists, adjusting to its material and immaterial context.

Since its founding, the studio has won first prize in the competition for the rehabilitation of the heritage complex of Casa de Parga, in Meis, and second prize in the competition to plan the seafront of Pobra do Caramiñal. Its work has been selected for the exhibitions ‘Galicia, unha escola’, by the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the UDC, and ‘Nova Arquitectura Galega’, by the Official College of Architects of Galicia, in addition to two projects included in the CSCAE Architecture Awards of 2024 and 2026.

Marxe works with an extensive network of collaborators, with whom the studio builds, project by project, horizontal structures adapted to each commission.

Javier Rocamonde

Javier Rocamonde is an architect from ETSAC (UDC) and holds a PhD in Urbanism from ETSAB (UPC), awarded with distinction (sobresaliente cum laude), training he has complemented with advanced studies in architecture at UPC, territorial planning at USC, landscape architecture at UPC and rehabilitation at Escola Sert and the Fundación Laboral de la Construcción. He co-founded Bivaque in 2014 together with Natalia Alvaredo and, since 2023, co-founds Marxe, where his practice has been recognised in competitions such as Europan 15 and 16, ‘El futur de les infraestructures viàries. Nusos i cruïlles’, by the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, and the competition for the rehabilitation of the heritage complex of Casa de Parga, in Meis. His project to improve accessibility and lighting at Finca Rosequillo, in Villaescusa (Cantabria), was selected for the CSCAE Architecture Awards of 2026, the same recognition received in 2024 by another of his projects with Marxe a+t.

Alongside his professional practice, Rocamonde carries out teaching and research work at various universities and institutions, among them ETSAB, ESTAC and UIC. He has been an associate professor and teaching and research staff member of the Department of Urbanism and Territorial Planning at ETSAB (UPC), and a senior architect at the Jofre Roca Arquitectes studio, in Barcelona. His research work has been carried out through competitive national and international projects, and has led him to take part in congresses and conferences across Europe and Latin America.

Natalia Alvaredo

Natalia Alvaredo is an architect from ETSAC (UDC), with an Official Master’s Degree in Urbanism from the same school and an Official Master’s Degree in Remote Sensing and GIS from UAB. Her career, developed between Europe and Latin America, combines the drafting of planning instruments, urban agendas and strategic plans with the development of GIS methodologies geared towards urban and territorial analysis, a crossing of scales and tools she has practised in teams such as the Barcelona Urban Ecology Agency and Barcelona Regional.

In 2014 she co-founded Bivaque together with Javier Rocamonde, a studio with which she was awarded prizes in more than a dozen national and international competitions, among them Europan 15 and 16. Since 2023 she co-founds Marxe a+t, where she continues to develop that urban and territorial outlook through the analysis of the territory.

Aurora Gil Méndez

Aurora Gil Méndez is an architect trained at the Universidade da Coruña, where she completed the Master’s Degree in Architecture, with a period of study at the Sapienza Università di Roma through the Erasmus programme. Before joining Marxe she worked as an architect at Hábitat Social, S. Galega, an experience that broadened her outlook on habitat from a social and community scale.

She has been part of Marxe a+t since its founding in 2023. She has a particular interest in natural building, bioclimatic architecture and participatory processes, as well as in exploring the role urban planning can play in the right to the city.

Project by Marxe a+t