"Formentera was unique. The sea, and a little rock in the sea, and I was on this little-known rock because there was nothing there. [...] Being warm in winter when it is cold, being cool in summer when it is hot, and conserving water—that is all that is necessary to live. The wind, the sun, and the rain were what I needed, nothing more," summarized Henri Quillé in 2016, from Paris, after a career dedicated to building some 30 houses on Formentera, the smallest of the Balearic Islands.
Henri Quillé (1928–2018) was a French architect and a pioneer in self-sufficiency and renewable energy starting in the late 1960s. He was also a modern architect trained under Le Corbusier at the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille and a co-founder of Atelier 12 in Paris. Immediately following the events of May 1968, he moved to Formentera in search of an ideal society and the myth of the Mediterranean island, which he materialized through the construction of modern, timeless, and self-sufficient architecture.
