Firm: Arnau estudi d’arquitectura
Client: particular
Place: C. Sant Narcís, Olot
Reference: O-2021-01
Project: Detached house
Photographs: Marc Torra
Sliding down the slope of a rocky mountain, the house moves by itself. And then it stops. It seems to have found a good enough place in the natural morphology of the terrain to fit in and to let its functional carcass rest comfortably.
The rocky conglomerate mountain that welcomes it is so hard that it imposes its own laws: the project lowers its head and submits to the topographic dogma, and the topography becomes the mould of the form and the inspiration of the concept.
Like stones piled up in a scree, each section of the house rests on the one below, and so on, until the mountain rests on top of it all. “If someone or something stirs it, I’ll come tumbling down with the others. If nothing comes near, I’ll be here, still, for days and days…”1
1 Maria Barbal, “Stone in a Landslide”, 1985, translated from Catalan by Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell