Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco . photos: © José Hevia
Cardedeu, an old village located 45 km from Barcelona, experienced a significant suburban development during the Spanish real estate boom of the 1990s. The house at Bellavista 21, owned by Jaume and Maria Luisa, can be considered paradigmatic of the aesthetic fostered by this financial phenomenon for at least three reasons.
First, the house’s original design, materials and construction details reveal the imaginaries of opulence that drove part of real-estate-boom design in Spain: the staircase of the house is located inside a crenel-crowned tower with lancet arch windows; the entrance verandah is supported by prefabricated, casted Doric columns; the hall and the staircase are covered in mass-produced Andalusian tiling.
Second, the privileged views over the old town from the house’s back façade, at the edge of a suburban area and cow fields, are under continuous threat: once the country experiences an economic recovery, the fields will probably be urbanized.
And third, the house’s domestic interior attests to the radically different generational sensitivities that have constituted the boom. In the interior of Bellavista 21, large amounts of traditional, Castilian craftwork produced by Maria Luisa, which recall the rural origins of the family, are placed alongside signature design objects acquired per the suggestion of Maria and Jaume’s sons.
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