Michaela Li

Deià Grotto Theatre

Founded in fiction, the proposal draws inspiration from the novel The White Goddess: An Encounter by Simon Gough, who recounts his time spent in Mallorca as a young boy visiting his great uncle, the poet Robert Graves. During his visit, he stumbles upon an underground grotto, which he describes as having a spiral staircase, a stone stage and an auditorium like quality. The grotto becomes a source of fascination for Simon and he revisits it periodically throughout his life. The interplay between reality, memory, play and storytelling became recurring themes for this project. 

Through spatial studies using various media, the project developed into an open air grotto theatre, paying homage to Graves, and the rich geological and topographical history of Deià. The geology of Mallorca is mainly comprised of limestone and sandstone, with networks of caves scattered throughout the island, where water has previously eroded the stone to create pockets of space. These features lent themselves to creating an underground form. 

Geometries extracted from Fond Marin II, a painting by Joan Miró, who was a good friend of Robert Graves, form the limestone enclosures of the theatre. This approach allowed exploration into an unconventional method of creating a plan for the grotto space that felt both carved and made. The earth initially excavated is laid on top of the limestone and wind towers emerge from the landscape acting as landmarks to service the spaces with natural ventilation. These towers connect to an underground tunnel, called a qanat, flowing into the torrent at the bottom of the site. Qanats were introduced to the Balearic Islands by the Maghrebine Berbers in the Middle Ages, who used them to irrigate arable land. Access to the theatre comes from two atalayas, watch towers, at either end of the site, each encasing the spiral stone staircase that Simon describes.