The living room of Can Lis. Sunlight fills the five window recesses.

The patio, colonnade and living room of Can Lis form one continuous space

Can Lis sits 20 meters above the sea in a dramatic clifftop location near Porto Petro.

The soft buttery-coloured sandstone for both houses was cut from a local quarry

The sandstone for both Utzons' houses was hand-sawn from the local quarry.

Utzon himself on site during the construction of Can Feliz

In Can Feliz, Utzon painted the arched terracotta tiles of the ceiling white

The Can Feliz living room is a grand theatre-like space over two levels, descending towards the spectacularly framed view

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In Sydney he designed a building that has come to stand for a nation. Then Jørn Utzon, the architect of the iconic opera house, retreated to Mallorca where he built two sublime houses, both based around a series of inter-linked blocks. Drawing on African and Chinese forms, responding to terrain, landscape and climate, and using local materials, Utzon redefined contemporary Mediterranean architecture.

Shortly after he left Australia, Jørn Utzon, the architect behind the Sydney Opera House, was visiting friends on Mallorca. The landscape and climate were not unlike New South Wales where he and his family had lived in the early 1960s and, after enquiring of a local farmer if any land was for sale, they were offered three plots: “beautiful, marvellous and paradise”. Wisely, they chose paradise, located inland on a steep hill with sweeping views over farmland and far away to a distant, shimmering ribbon of sea. But the Utzons weren’t ready for paradise just yet and bought another plot, this one on a clifftop site overlooking the sea near Porto Petro. Here, in 1972, Utzon built Can Lis, a spectacular family home which, with its use of local materials and its eloquent response to site and climate, set the standard for contemporary Mediterranean architecture.

Utzon, who celebrated his 90th birthday in 2008, had first come to Mallorca from his native Denmark in 1958. The previous year he had designed a holiday village for children stricken by polio, and, though never built, on paper we can see how it would have worked: a series of linked blocks or pavilions. Fascinated by courtyard houses, from Japan and China to Nubia, Utzon had already designed a series of houses throughout the 1950s based around a courtyard and sheltering behind an enclosing wall. He’d also planned a family home in Australia consisting of three distinct living blocks: bedrooms, living and kitchen/dining. All these elements were to be synthesised in the first of his Mallorcan homes.

Set among pines and myrtles, Can Lis is staggered along the cliff top in five loosely linked blocks, each individually adjusting to the terrain and contours of the land. Initially modelled using sugar cubes, there’s a kitchen and dining block, with colonnaded outdoor eating and seating area, a separate living room, and two bedroom blocks, each with its own sitting court looking out to sea.

Utzon was pleased to find that a basic kit of parts was available locally. Firstly, his building blocks–traditional, buttery-coloured sandstone–were quarried nearby and sold in standard sizes of 80x40cm and either 10 or 20cm thick. The architect asked the stone masons to leave the rough circular saw marks on the stone. A different harder stone from Santanyi was used for the floors. To make roofs and the door and window openings, concrete I-beams were standard and these beams were then spanned by local arched terracotta tiles.

“My father loved working with the local craftsmen,” recalled Utzon’s son Jan some 30 years later when he picked up the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize on his behalf. “When he appeared at the building site with some bottles of wine, the craftsmen knew that he’d had new ideas during the night and that some of the work already done would have to be changed.”

He must have run through the stuff by the crate load, because Utzon continually adjusted his original plans on site. While building the living room for instance, the masons ran out of stone but it was agreed all round that the space had by then reached the right proportions. “Similarly,” points out Richard Weston in his study of Utzon’s work, “the small clearstory window which allows the sun to enter in midafternoon was not foreseen in the drawings.”

The living room is a breath-taking space. Window frames are out of sight, placed on the outside of the building and the windows themselves, invisible, undivided sheets of glass, are placed within stone-lined recesses, giving the impression that the openings have been punched through a massively thick wall. The result is best described by architect John Pardey:

“There are few spaces in modern architecture that grip you by the back of the neck, and even fewer that possess such an overwhelming sense of place.… The tension between deep enclosure and projected view combines in the sensation of being sucked out of the five large, deep apertures into the ocean; yet at the same time, the horizon seems to be pulled right into the room–an enthralling ebb and flow, like that
of the ocean.”

But as Utzon grew older, the glaring surface of the sea became too much for eyes weakened by a lifetime studying pencil drawings. What’s more, architectural pilgrims and sightseers were becoming a real nuisance. The Utzons decided to move inland and build on their “paradise” site. They called this house Can Feliz.

Here, the architect designed three blocks containing living, dining and bedroom spaces, set side by side. To the right of the entrance hall are the private areas and courtyards, while to the left sits the formal living and working area, a grand theatre-like space over two levels descending towards the spectacularly framed view. The upper part of the space is set aside for work, with rich timber bookcases, a vast work table  and a seat with white linen cushions facing the view and the lower level. Down here, rocking chairs are arranged in an arc, ring-side seats to the spectacle of nature.

“Walking into the living room is like entering a brightly lit town square after narrow alleys,” says Pardey. The tapered, funnel-like apertures of Can Lis have been replaced here by three deep bays formed by temple-like columns. Window bays are half the width as those at Can Lis, but twice the height. The result feels unmistakably Greek: the house is also built on a platform, a “miniature Acropolis” as Weston puts it, with the columns, clustering inside and out to articulate the meeting of interior and landscape.

Once again Utzon has used the same materials as Can Lis, but the rougher blocks have been tamed this time. And once again, Utzon took an active role in the construction process.

“He was on site the whole time. He came every day,” recalls architectural assistant Børge Nissen. It was fascinating for Nissen to work alongside Utzon, but he goes on, “in some ways it was quite boring for me too; I didn’t actually have to do any thinking. Utzon had everything already solved!”

The private wing is organised around a generous covered terrace, which keeps out the sun’s glare in summer, and from here platforms descend in a series of inter-linked levels down to the swimming pool. At Can Lis, nature had provided the platform for the house, a lofty clifftop location. Here, over three levels, Utzon has fashioned his own.

“It would seem theatrical,” Utzon has said of Can Feliz, “if I said that I have a household altar. But that’s what I have. This place is my altar. This is where, with the deepest respect, I face nature, and with the greatest passion, contemplate the sun and the land in front of me.”