This House Was Once a GIANT CHICKEN Farm — Now It’s ARCHITECTURE

Imagine discovering that this house was once the largest chicken farm in the Balearic Islands and later became a painter's studio, a gallery, a theater, and even the stage for a performance by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. This place exists, and today it is reborn as Sa Taranja Haus, a renovation project by Beef Architect in Andrac on the island of Mallorca, a work that didn't just renovate walls but recovered an entire story. Sa Taranja doesn't begin as beautiful architecture. It begins as rural infrastructure. In the 1960s, the complex was built as a large farming facility, and for decades it functioned as a productive organism, simple, direct, without glamour. But in the late 1990s, everything changed. A German painter, Hartmut Usedal, passed by the site, saw a for-sale sign, and recognized a rare potential. He bought the complex and transformed what had been a farm into a space dedicated to art, first as a studio, then as an informal cultural center that attracted artists from around the world. And most remarkably, the three original farm structures, long sheds of nearly 80 meters, were given new lives as studios, galleries, and even a small theater. Sa Taranja became an unexpected cultural point on the map. After Hartmut's passing, the place was managed by his friend Tina Horn until 2017, when a new owner took over with the intention of keeping this cultural legacy alive. But restoring a place with so much memory is not simple. Any wrong intervention could erase precisely what made Sa Taranja what it is. The project by Beef Architect was divided into two phases. The first, the one seen here, focuses on a specific and historic volume, a stone house more than 300 years old, located at the edge of Andrace's urban fabric. For a long time, this house served as a residence. More recently, it had become a support space for culinary activities linked to the cultural center. The mission now was to return it to a more noble and coherent role within the complex, transforming it once again into housing, this time as a guest house with four apartments and an office for the manager, locally known as the Oficina. And the way this transformation happens is what gives the project its character. Instead of modernizing and covering over the past, the team did the opposite. With the help of local labor, they removed recent additions and revealed the original stone structure in its most honest and solid form. The house becomes what it always was, now prepared to be lived in again. To control light and establish identity, a simple gesture repeats throughout the project, a wooden lattice that casts patterned shade. It is contemporary but subtle, not competing with the stone, only dialoguing with it. And then comes one of the most beautiful aspects of this renovation, the objects. Throughout the site, the architects found artifacts and material memories and decided to integrate them into the interior, an old table, chairs, traditional Mallorcan glass, and artworks from the golden era of the cultural center. The house is not decorated, it is curated like a living archive of the place. Natural light became a priority. In the communal kitchen, the architects created a larger opening on the north facade to bring in more daylight and visually connect the house to the street. It's a precise intervention, but one that transforms the entire interior experience. At the same time, the project respects what already existed. Original wooden elements were structurally reinforced, but their color and presence were preserved as marks of time. Nothing here tries to look too new. The value lies in maintaining authenticity. When new materials appear, they come with awareness of place. Local mare stone is used in new additions, ensuring continuity with Mallorca's construction traditions. And the exterior is not scenery, it is an extension of the house. The relationship with the existing courtyard is emphasized, especially because a covered area naturally prolongs the interior spaces. This transition creates a very Mediterranean way of living. Shade, open air, encounters, pauses, the house functioning beyond its walls. But Sa Tarroña does not end with phase one, and that too is part of the narrative. The second phase focuses on the large industrial sheds of the former complex, the old chicken coops turned into studios and galleries. The proposal is to preserve the original industrial architecture, marked by a delicate prefabricated structure of metal profiles, restoring what makes these spaces unique. The idea is to update enclosures, adjust openings to improve usability, and create a flexible internal infrastructure system so the spaces can adapt to exhibitions, artist residencies, events, and performances without losing their essence. In the end, Sa Tarroña is not just a renovated house, it is a restoration of meaning. It is a place that was once labor, then became art, then nearly disappeared, and now seeks to become a generator of culture again, locally and internationally, without erasing the layers that made it special. And perhaps this is the greatest lesson of the project. Sometimes the most powerful architecture is not the one that invents a future from scratch, but the one that allows the past to breathe again.