Future focus: an audience with regenerative pioneer Finn Harries

L’OFFICIEL IBIZA: You've been coming to Ibiza for 22 years. What role has the island played in your life?

FINN HARRIES: Ibiza really feels like a second home. When I was younger, I used to visit every summer with my parents, and we would stay in the north. I think being exposed to the ocean, the mountains and the environment really impacted me as a child. I grew up in London, so coming here was my connection with the outdoors, with nature and with a diverse group of people who came from all over the world to visit this island.

LOI: Climate activism began as a grassroots movement. How is your generation furthering the conversation?

FH: I’m a second-generation climate activist. I grew up watching my mother [the documentary maker and environmentalist Rebecca Frayn] organise a group of women and friends to campaign against the expansion of the third runway at Heathrow and illegal levels of air pollution, so I was exposed to the climate space from a young age. What’s happening now is a growing conversation around climate that’s increasingly intersectional. That means exploring the many different themes that intersect with the climate crisis and this is really important as we think about how to address it. The problem isn’t climate change itself but rather this is a symptom of cultural systems built on dangerous ideas like extraction, colonialism and human dominance. My generation is starting to unpick and challenge the very foundation of these ideas.

LOI: Your regeneration project, Can Pep, has been an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking. How did it come about?

FH: Can Pep is a project that we began three years ago. It’s a 400-year-old farmhouse on a mountain between San Juan and Portinatx with 15 hectares of land. It had been on the market for a long time, but I think people were daunted by the challenge of a house that had no electricity, no running water and was practically falling down. Since we had been on the island for 20 years, we felt we were in a position to give it a go. The challenge of this project from the beginning was how to convert a traditional finca, which is steeped in history, without damaging its identity. How do you preserve that cultural heritage while making it a place that is fit for modern living? That was the question that prevailed throughout the whole design process. Our first decision was to celebrate natural materials, so pine, lime and stone are used almost exclusively throughout the house. Natural materials are great because they sequester carbon when they grow. They’re found locally so they have less impact from transport. And it’s just a nicer environment to be in because you can smell the wood and feel the texture of the lime. On top of that, we decided to remain off-grid. The entire energy system runs off 36 solar panels and water comes from a spring on the land. There’s a huge amount of terraced land that has been left untended for decades, so we’ve been working to restore it and make space for a more biodiverse ecosystem to thrive. The natural pond we’ve just put in is a good example of an intervention that supports frogs, dragonflies, birds and fish, while also providing a beautiful space to swim.

LOI: You’re working on an exciting project with Christian Jochnick, of the regenerative platform Juntos. What can you tell us about it?

FH: I’ve been researching the intersection of architecture and agriculture for the last two years, asking how we can use these two practices to respond to the climate crisis. Christian and I connected over our shared interest in this field – specifically in regenerative agriculture, which is his focus at Juntos. Over the last decade the island has lost 75 percent of its agricultural land. A boom in land prices and cheap, imported food from the mainland are mainly to blame. Christian and I are interested in how you support a transition back to the land, with regenerative techniques that help strengthen the local agricultural economy. We’re working on a project that will retrofit and renovate an old dairy farm in the heart of the island into a community food hub and farm. The whole design is based around this three-part program - cultivation, transformation, consumption. The ambition is to create the full food economy in one site, from growing and processing to consuming. We’ve become so disconnected from the source of our own nutrition and from the value of healthy soil and thriving ecosystems. The project tries to bring people back into the process and start a conversation around why we need to support local food production and food sovereignty in Ibiza.

LOI: What does the future hold for Ibiza, where we have a conscious and connected community but an increasingly fragile ecosystem?

FH: Ibiza is always in a state of flux and change. Many different communities and cultures have risen and fallen here. The Phoenicians, the Romans, the Byzantines and the Moors have all made this island home at one point, bringing their knowledge and their traditions. In this spirit, people continue to arrive, seeking community and refuge from a mainstream culture that is headed towards self-destructive disaster; however it is no utopia here. Ibiza is a nexus of contradictions and polarity, and in a way that’s what makes it so special. It’s a microcosm of many of the challenges we face on a global scale. In that sense, it offers a good case study for how we start to transition towards a culture focused on regeneration and resilience at the community scale. I hope it becomes a reference for others, a lighthouse in the darkness, but it is early days, and the challenges are many.