Cork Houses in Catalonia
- Sabine Drey
In earlier times bark from the cork oaks in the wooded regions of the Costa Brava was used to make corks for sparkling wines, but today the manufacture of cork products is concentrated in Portugal and southern Spain. In the Palafrugell museum and in a disused factory, however, visitors can still study the extraction and processing of cork bark in the region. In architecture the material is mostly used as insulating material, but the panels featured in the two buildings in the dense cork and pine woods on the Catalonian coast have a twin function: they are both external insulation and facade cladding. A 40 mm-thick layer of cork was screwed to the buildings' timber structure and lime mortar was then used to fix a further 50 mm-thick layer in place.
