Marés stone is a porous, bioclastic calcarenite (calcareous sandstone) native to the Balearic Islands. It is a sedimentary sandstone formed by the compaction of marine and aeolian sands upon Mallorca’s ancient marine shelf. With the exception of those in the Serra de Tramuntana, every town had nearby quarries for sourcing building materials, establishing a direct link between geology and architecture. Unlike earth, marés was found only in specific locations; its extraction required specialized tools, technical expertise, and community-based labor networks dedicated to quarrying and shaping the stone. Consequently, marés was a high-cost material that, initially, was used primarily for monumental architecture.

The industrialization of the 1950s popularized the use of marés , extending its application to all manner of buildings constructed during the tourism boom. Decades later, concrete blocks replaced load-bearing marés walls, concrete took the place of arches and vaults, and the simple stacking of blocks supplanted the age-old craft of marés stonemasonry. Reviving its use means preserving a technique—and the associated building culture—that is deeply rooted in the island. Historically, this kind of stone has been a material linked to collective labor and artisanal industrial processes. Opting for this material today entails revitalizing an ancestral craft that can now leverage new technologies to facilitate extraction and cutting.

A new generation of architects in Mallorca credit are exploring marès as an ecological network of relations between history, quarries, landscape, and building culture. Many credit the architect Jørn Utzon’s ‘rediscovery’ of the stone in the 1970s, when he completed two well- known houses, Can Lis and Can Feliz.  We see this as an exemplary case of post-extractive architecture, which promotes material circularity in terms of architecture (re-use, dis-assembly, bio-diversity, de-carbon) in relation to the extractive landscape as a cultural asset.