© Photopat / Alamy Stock Photo summer heat. The sun’s rays also bounce off the pergolas and the whitewashed facades painted with lime to waterproof the walls. The windows are narrow, the frames are made of reeds and mud and the roofs are covered with Arab tiles. “They’re real treasures” says architect Pablo Farfán, 48, who has been studying these features for two decades. 500 years old Farfán researches numerous regions in Spain and Portugal, but he’s passionate about La Axarquía, east of Malaga, a region known as the Andalusian Tuscany for its wines and land-scapes. It contains clues that explain the uniqueness of these towns, some with just 200 inhabitants. “They’re wonderful to visit, but they also teach us a lot” he says. Many of these hous-es are over 500 years old. This has been proved by chance findings like the one in 2003, when a 12th century Koran and two 15th century books in Arabic were discovered in a wall at Cútar. Their owner, Muhammad Al-Jayyar, is believed to have hidden them in anticipation of better times for Muslims. Studying white villages is also useful for building new homes. We don’t build walls one metre thick any more, but Farfán uses blocks of compressed sand, cork and lime so the walls keep the houses cool in summer and warm in winter. It’s the same philosophy used by specialists like María José Bustos from Granada and Jesús Moral from Cadiz, founders of Beam Estudio in 2017. “We make 21st century homes with traditional materials that adapt to today’s lifestyles” Bustos explains. They point out that the architecture in every white village is sim-ilar, but always with small differences. This means it’s inter-esting to visit places that at first glance seem the same. Exam-ples include Casares, Mijas, Ojén, the tiny village of Salares and Frigiliana, where Bernard Rudofsky, great defender of popular architecture, built his last creation, La Casa. Saving houses with new materials Beam Studio’s work processes are surgical. Beam by beam, stone by stone, they restore homes so they’ll last another 500 years. One of their latest projects was overseeing building work commissioned by Malaga-based Sandra Cabello and Icelandic designer Helga Joseps for their initiative The Pueblo Project in collaboration with O-SH Architecture. The project involves the refurbishment of a delightful house in El Borge, a village surrounded by vineyards whose economy is intimate-ly linked to raisin production. “Vernacular architecture is our inspiration; it’s bioclimat-ic and is based on the circular economy” adds Pedro Rosa, head of Todobarro, which adapts traditional building mate-rials to the 21st century. He manufactures bricks and tiles in geometric formats based on Andalusian designs and with textures achieved from the impact of flames. Everything is fired in the same ovens that were used in the Al Andalus era in Vélez-Málaga. He’s recovering a legacy that gives the region its identity and his materials are used in homes in Ibiza and Miami as well as on the Portuguese Algarve. White villages are growing and expanding beyond the borders of Andalusia. La tranquila localidad de Ojén. // The quiet town of Ojén.