This masía in the Ebro delta recovers its identity and visual dignity through the intervention of architects Carmen Basso and María de Ros

Before the renovation, this masía in the Ebro delta, in the province of Tarragona, had spent decades accumulating layers of interventions that estranged it from itself: aluminium, stoneware and gotelé plaster superimposed on an original structure of stone, wood and iron. The owning family’s initial intention was to carry out a few improvements to enjoy the house as a second residence. However, the determination of both owners and architects to make the most of everything the house had to offer eventually led to a full renovation that allowed the building to recover its original logic..

Architects Carmen Basso, with her studio O2Basso, and María de Ros began the intervention with the aim of uncovering everything the building held beneath the layers added over time. The project, carried out over one year, completely reorganised a fragmented layout, with rooms that turned their backs on one another and on the surrounding landscape, hindering circulation, functionality and the entry of natural light.

On the ground floor —122 m², plus 23 m² of courtyard— the old storeroom, until then a residual space, became the starting point for the new kitchen, which in turn made it possible to open up a spacious living-dining room facing outward. This floor also includes a study, a guest toilet and a guest bedroom with its own bathroom. The first floor, 87 m² plus an 8 m² terrace, now houses the night zone: a principal en-suite bedroom, two children’s bedrooms, a shared bathroom and a playroom. A new staircase, wider and brighter than the previous one, connects both levels and also descends to the cellar in the basement.

A stove that organises the living room

The heart of the house is the living room, designed around a wood-burning stove capable of heating both the ground floor and the first floor. Finding its exact position was not straightforward, but once resolved, it ended up ordering a space that, given its size, ran the risk of feeling scattered: next to the fire sits the sofa area, and facing the kitchen courtyard, a built-in bench. Between the two, a dining area connected to the kitchen through a serving hatch.

The courtyard that wasn’t in the plans

The most unexpected discovery of the project came when the beams of a room adjoining the old storeroom were removed. An interior courtyard appeared that had not initially been accounted for. «It was a space that won us over the moment we saw it, and with it we gave the kitchen a completely unexpected spatial value: light, depth and a new relationship with the outside», the architects explain. The kitchen now opens onto that courtyard and the garden through two large French doors, onto the living room through the serving hatch, and onto the pool area through a small window, all of it reinforced by a pre-existing longitudinal skylight that turns this room into the luminous centre of the house.

A structural problem also came to light: several beams affected by termites that had to be treated or replaced. On the first floor, the architects opted for exposed laminated beams, a decision that lends presence to the ceilings and was used as an opportunity to add the thermal insulation the house had completely lacked.

Materials that already belonged to the place

Choosing the flooring took time and an intensive search. Having ruled out tufa stone, the architects found, in a quarry in Ulldecona, a stone almost identical to the one already present on the exterior terrace; adapted for interior use, it now runs through the floors and headboards of the bedrooms and bathrooms as well, combined with the plastered walls, Fantini taps and Catalano sanitaryware. Built-in wardrobes do without doors, using only curtains instead.

That same commitment to coherence extends to every constructive detail: wooden windows with interior shutters on the façade —a more effective solution against the delta’s wind than exterior shutters—, front door and courtyard carpentry in painted iron, and a kitchen resolved with masonry low walls, painted wood drawer fronts and a white marble worktop, true to the logic of traditional masías. «All the built-in furniture is part of the project and was designed by us: on the ground floor, the sofa area, the shelving with the integrated fireplace and the kitchen structure; on the first floor, the shelving, the wardrobes and the headboards, seeking for all these elements to integrate naturally into the architecture of the house», the architects note.

The exterior pergola, previously flat, also gained a curve that lends it lightness without giving up its original materials. The result is a masía that has recovered its own logic, with spaces that breathe, materials that belong to the place, and an intervention that, by following the building’s own traces, becomes invisible — the best that can be said of a restoration.

Project: Full renovation of a masía.
Location: Delta del Ebro. Tarragona.

Surface areas: ground floor 122 m², courtyard 23 m², first floor 87 m², terrace 8 m², cellar 8 m².
Completed: 2026.
Architects: Carmen Basso (O2Basso) y María de Ros.

Photography: Daniel Loewe.
Builder: H2O Constructora.
Flooring: Piedra de cantera de Ulldecona.
Taps: Fantini.
Sanitaryware: Catalano.
Fans: Boffi.
Custom furniture: designed by Carmen Basso and María de Ros.

Carmen Basso

Carmen Basso (Barcelona, 1973) has been an architect since 1999 and founded, in 2004, O2Basso Arquitectos together with Marcos Basso Cano (1973-2019), a studio based in Barcelona. Her career has developed mainly in the city, though she has also lived and worked in Dublin, Rome and Brussels, an international experience that has shaped her understanding of architecture and has allowed her to develop numerous projects for foreign clients settled in Barcelona.

From O2Basso she works in architecture, interior design, landscaping and exhibition design, leading a multidisciplinary team with particular attention to dialogue with the client and to constructive detail. Among her recent projects is the renovation of the headquarters of the Col·legi Oficial de Gestors Administratius de Catalunya (COGAC) in the Torre Urquinaona, in Barcelona, carried out together with the studio AEmotional.

“It’s important not to be carried away by trends. A well-designed house must be conceived with the place where it stands in mind,” the architect sums up, for whom lighting —natural and artificial— and the relationship between interior and exterior are the qualities shared by well-resolved homes.

María de Ros

María de Ros Padrós (Barcelona, 1974) is an architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura del Vallès (ETSAV) and from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland).

After working at the studios of Liebman Villavecchia Arquitectos, Ignacio Mendaro Corsini, Ruiz-Larrea Asociados and b720 Arquitectos, between Barcelona and Madrid, in 2005 she founded her own studio in Barcelona —registered with the COAC under number 49054-7—, from which she develops projects in architecture, interior design, museography and ephemeral installations, with particular care for detail and for adapting to the needs of each client.

Her work has been recognized with the FAD Awards, the Letra and Anuaria awards, Vivir con Madera and, internationally, with the European Design Awards, the SEGD in Washington, the IDEA from the Industrial Designers of America and the SPARK in New York.

Project by Carmen Basso