Why Irish architects are going to Ibiza

A few discerning Irish purchasers of Spanish property are now commissioning architects to design their homes in the sun, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

According to a recent report from Madrid, the number of Irish people who own property in Spain now stands at 250,000. Indeed, within the previous year, our compatriots invested around €1 billion in villas and apartments on the Costa del Sol.

All but a tiny fraction are bought off the plans or when a newly-completed scheme is being marketed. And though Irish investors account for around a third of all foreigners buying in Spain, only a tiny fraction would have commissioned an architect to design their dream home.

The more discerning tend to plump for other resort areas, such as Ibiza, where a number of prominent Irish business people have villas. And despite its raunchy reputation from the Sky TV series, Ibiza Uncovered, the once pirate-run island in the Balearics is quite a civilised place.

John Meagher, of Dublin architects de Blacam and Meagher, has designed a number of villas on Ibiza for private Irish clients - none more spectacular than the rectilinear white-walled villa currently being completed in the pine-covered hills of Santa Eularia, deep in the Morna valley.

One Irish property developer's wife reportedly burst into tears after she had toured the site last summer. It wasn't only because she was knocked out by the design. What really made her cry was the realisation that her husband had been building nothing but rubbish for years.

The knockout villa comes in two parts - a main block, two storeys high, which contains the livingroom and kitchen on the ground floor with the main bedroom and study above, and a single-storey block of four en suite guest-rooms laid out beside the long L-shaped swimming pool.

The main block is surrounded on two sides by a full-height colonnade, which forms a natural extension of the living space.

White awnings can be lowered at the flick of a switch in the openings between the concrete columns to provide shading from solar glare, of which there's a lot in Ibiza.

John Meagher, a frequent visitor for 20 years, says the design of the villa - though utterly contemporary - takes its inspiration from the island's "completely unique" architecture going back to the Phoenicians who first settled there. For they, too, built flat-roofed, white-walled houses.

"A lot of research has been done into the proportioning system they used, which relied on cubes - single, double or triple cubes - to make spaces.

They also used a modular system for the width of doorways, windows, etcetera, and I'm sure Le Corbusier developed his module from that."

Meagher says he doesn't believe "for one second" that Corb never visited Ibiza, as books on one of the 20th century's great masters maintain. "It's all over his work. And it could only be from Ibiza because the way they built houses in Majorca, with tiled roofs, was completely different".

Though the swimming pool had yet to be filled at the time of our visit, it was possible to imagine its shimmering blue water fringed by white marble and a row of small olive trees, transplanted from Valencia. Planting around the site includes native species, particularly wild rosemary.

Ibiza's planners didn't like the broad expanses of marble as they felt a rustic treatment would be more appropriate. To satisfy final inspection, a coarse red sand has been laid in the places to be marbled; a bit like Ireland really - what's written down is more important than what exists.

But there is reason to be careful. Unlike the Costa del Sol, Ibiza has not been pillaged by rampant development. When things started getting out of hand, the Green-controlled island government imposed a ban on further construction and even ordered the removal of some illegally-built villas.

This policy is currently under review, following a change in the government's political composition, and it seems likely that a more liberal regime will be introduced, subject to minimum sizes for plots of land.

The measure being proposed would allow one villa per eight acres as a general rule. In more sensitive areas of Ibiza, it would be one villa per 20 or 30 acres.

Contrast that with the willingness of Irish planners to grant permission for houses on half-acre sites, even in environmentally vulnerable areas, encouraged now by the so-called Sustainable Rural Housing guidelines.

"The planners in Ibiza are trying to control development and I think they're right," Meagher says. Its unique qualities, which include a relatively unspoiled landscape and the varied charms of Vila (Ibiza town), have made it a mecca for artists, writers, musicians and the international jet set.

The historic walled town has been designated a World Heritage Site because it is one of the few surviving fortresses of its type in the Mediterranean.

It is beautifully-preserved and the rocky area on its southern flank is protected as a nature reserve, as is a large part of the nearby island of Formentera.

Not that Ibiza - or Eivissa, as the Catalans want us to call it, since it is part of their historic domain - is entirely devoid of vulgarity. Some appalling slab-like budget hotels and apartments disfigure parts of the coastal strip, but in general they're confined to the more intensive areas.

Terrible mistakes were made in the past, such as allowing rich expatriates to build sumptuous villas in highly scenic locations - with locals asking questions about why this was allowed to happen.

What the island's government is seeking to do now is to strike a balance between conserving the landscape and allowing a limited amount of development. Inevitably, because of the extensive acreages required, this will cater for the exclusive end of the market; the less well-heeled will barely get a look-in.

Property owners with large plots are watching like hawks. One Dublin-based developer stands to cash in big-time on this relaxation of zoning; last year, he bought 160 acres (67 hectares) with panoramic maritime views, for €1.6 million - about the same as a farm in the west of Ireland.

As for the cost of building an architect-designed villa in Ibiza, John Meagher says it can be done for €750,000 - well within the price range of Irish buyers snapping up neo-traditional hacienda-style villas in the congested Costa del Sol.

The only drawback is that there are no direct flights from Dublin.