Dwellings at the beach of Sant Feliu de Guíxols
credits
Site: Sant Feliu de Guíxols
Client: Família Domènech Girbau
Year of the project: 1972
Area: 700m2
Awards: Included in the provincial building guide of Girona
location
description
In 1971, Roser and I received a valuable commission from my father: building dwellings on Sant Pol beach for the six sons who had already formed families and could not fit in the “Casa Gran”, erected by Josep Goday in 1902. Behind the “Casa Gran”, close to the road, there was an old stable and the henhouse which, with a small garden, rested on a gradient from the level of the garden to the access to the road (a slope of 8 metres). Concerned about the failure of the smaller houses, we thought we could concentrate six apartments in a tower, indeed “colonising” this residual area of the garden. By doing so, we would not ruin the garden. Moreover, this “defensive” idea had a strange positive charm as we would be challenging ourselves to build a high block. Doing this in front of a solid Art Nouveau house opened up an area of contrast, of distance, which we thought would be most suitable in order to avoid adversely affecting Goday’s beautiful work. We wanted a solid, neutral entity with a different language to those existing in this area, thus showing our respect. We enclosed this organic floor within an external neutral volume. Between each unit, due to the geometric difference, there would be levelling terraces that formed bordering spaces. The result was a simple bulding adjusted to the programme and the budget. The prism, shortened at an angle due to the presence of the road, crowned with the community swimming pool formed a strange rapport with the structures at road level.
