Left: inside restored townhouse Casa Sa Mar; below: Christoffer and Josephine Du Rietz at Camp Roig 31, their townhouse in Alaró PHOTO PIET-ALBERT GOETHALS quality and personality than those huge resorts can. We want to introduce them to the real Mallorca.” Wilder is among a growing population of foreigners with long-held ties to Mallorca who have recently chosen to capitalise on opportunities for respectful renovation. Swedish interior designers Christoffer and Josephine Du Rietz of Durietz Design had often visited the island – Josephine spent much of her childhood in her grandmother’s local summer house – but it was the discovery of abandoned townhouses in the French quarter of Sollér that inspired them to uproot their Stockholm-based Swedish design firm and change their lives for good. Seduced by the peaceful rhythm of island life, not to mention the goldmine of affordable architecture, they bought a decaying Mallorcan townhouse in 2016, named it Casa Sa Mar, and restored it as authentically as possible. Since selling it in 2018, they have gained a following of private Mallorcan clients while simultaneously moving on to other deep restorations, each of which they describe as a journey to protect and preserve “the next dream house”. “It’s been heartbreaking to see big hotel developers tearing down old buildings because they want to jam in as many rooms as they can,” Josephine says, explaining that they strive to restore as much as possible, from rotting window shutters to rusty doorknobs. “They destroy beautiful painted ceilings we do everything to keep, and they throw out those fantastic tiles we are looking for everywhere. For us, the architecture is the soul of a home – and much of the stuff from the past was made to be high quality, and to last. So we always work hard with local carpenters to bring as much as we can back to life.” Since their foray into the business via an undervalued townhouse seven years ago, residential sales tags in neighbourhoods ike Sollér have more than tripled. Mallorca’s real estate is now the most expensive in all of Spain, surging ahead while other comparable European markets have suffered: prices on the island have increased more than 10 per cent every year since 2020. And with the recent passing of a law that effects a total ban on all new construction in the Mallorcan countryside – good news for the oversaturated island’s delicate ecosystems – even the best-intentioned developers hoping to get in on a quickly dwindling supply of restoration projects will likely find that competition is steep, and getting steeper. “Everyone who comes to Mallorca falls in love with it the same way we did,” Cristoffer says. “And now people are finally seeing what nobody paid attention to before: the gems that have always been right here.” CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 21
