Based on Bonet Castellana‘s unique works, it is possible to trace a route that runs parallel to the sea on the outskirts of Barcelona. These outskirts are not understood as spaces that the city turns its back on: in general, we are talking about privileged areas that in the early 1960s were just beginning to be developed to meet the new standards of living demanded by the wealthy classes. The result is unique buildings, always isolated from neighbouring constructions, or houses on private estates and urban developments in garden cities.
Of all the experiments in single-family residential typology that Bonet Castellana carried out during his exile in Argentina and Uruguay, the application of his learnings in the Casa Gomis, recently acquired by the Ministry of Culture to convert it into a public facility, stands out in the surroundings of Barcelona. In the Maresme region, typological experiments such as the massive Mas Ribera estate or the formalism of the Balañà House, reminiscent of an old science fiction film, which, although less well known, bear witness to a clientele that knew and desired the architect’s prestige from an intellectual and social status point of view. And, moreover, they could afford it.
The construction of his first tower in the city, the Cervantes Tower Block, in an affluent neighbourhood where he would experiment with compositional and plastic freedom in his elevations, would run parallel to other high-rise buildings that the architect would carry out in Montbau – concise exercises by their nature, intended for rapid and effective construction to respond to a residential emergency resulting from migration from the countryside to the city. Other high-standing developments included the two residential buildings on Carrer de Cavallers, in the exclusive neighbourhood of Pedralbes, where he tried out two very different ways of expressing solutions to the same problem.
Finally, we find two works which are even more rare: the well-known and widely publicised Meridiana dog track, a modern architectural icon of the city, and the little-known complex for Mutua Laboral Medida, a giant in the middle of the Cordillera Litoral Natural Park, now abandoned and surrounded by more of the same. However, if the village of Hifrensa is too far away, this is a magnificent example of an infrastructure in which Bonet Castellana deployed all his resources.
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