I believe that the magic of La Ricarda,
after ten years of these wonderful letters between them,
is based in the communication between two people who were tremendously demanding of eachother
one was demanding of the other and each got the very best out of the other.
La Ricarda is a fundamentally welcoming house,
a place to retreat to, a place for introspection.
For me La Ricarda is a sophisticated creation in natural surroundings.
The house can be seen as an exercise in precise geometry
and yet at the same time it is spectacularly unorthodox.
It was important to look to the future and to push architectural boundaries
This house is absolutely unique. Nowadays it would be impossible to do such a thing.
He is not a very well-known architect and also, sadly for us, his work is as yet not the subject of academic study.
I think that this lack of recognition of Bonet, this forgetting of him…
I would say that in some cases he has suffered through having been deliberately forgotten by people who should have remembered him.
To talk of my father as simply a man with a profession would be a mistake.
My father was an architect from the moment he woke up in the mornings to when he went to bed.
As a father he was always an architect, too.
I learned to be like him and to enjoy being like him.
I learned to enjoy looking at a carpark and seeing how it could be improved…
and over breakfast to justify why I prefered the Beatles to the Rolling Stones.
My father was born in San Antonio, in a street called Viladomat.
He was the son labourers who worked the fields around Tarragona and who had fled hunger by walking all the way to Barcelona
where they ran a tavern, it was a tavern, a place for labourers, rather than a restaurant.
When my father left school every day, a school called 'los Escolapios' where he had a scholarship
he would go and work in the tavern.
When he was ten years old two priests appeared in the tavern and wanted to talk to my grandparents.
They told them that they would continue to pay for my father to study but on one condition
that they would never make him work again.
From that moment on he was a prodigious child.
He got top marks in everything and financed his studies by doing work for his fellow students.
He was know as 'el nen'.
He did his friends' work for one simple reason: so he would never have to ask his parents for a penny.
We do not know if Bonet and Ricardo Gomis had ever met before.
They were more or less as old as eachother, Bonet was born in 1913 and Gomis in 1910.
What we do know is that they had both been part of the same vanguardist movements of the 1930's, ADLAN and GATPAC.
We know, therefore, that they shared the same values and ideals… and that they saw the world in the same or in a very similar way.
My father was a very strict person with firm ideas on bringing up children.
My mother was much softer and more affectionate.
With his children my father was distant
but with adults he communicated very well and would have very long conversations.
Yet on the other hand he was very rigid.
My parents were extremely cultured people with incredible values, which I believe they have passed on to us… to all their children.
My father's position in his family meant that he found it very difficult to express his feelings
but my mother was the complete opposite.
Ricard Gomis was a great person and a great music lover, who was passionate about the music of his time.
He had already started to promote and to extend the reach of music duing the time of the Republic.
Apart from ADLAN, together with Prats and Robert Gerhard
they formed a group… they called Discòfils.
When the group formed Joan Prats was one of the promotors of the project and of the idea.
To begin with, therefore, any contact with Joan Prats was always to do with music.
Later it evolved and became about other, non-musical things.
They thought that music, and especially cultured music, could become much more popular
and they wanted to encourage the listening to music recorded on records.
Antonio Bonet had also been part of GATPAC,
along with Sert, Torres, Illescas
and they had made important progress in modernising architecture.
GATPAC was born in the Republic out of the need to difuse modern ideas.
In Spain, and in particular in Barcelona, GATPAC acted as a parallel source of knowledge to teach
what was not taught in the universities.
In Barcelona it was Sert who, let's say, approached Le Corbusier, collected this new information and who delivered it.
For Antonio Bonet, and of course also for GATPAC, Le Corbusier is an extremely important person.
In a very simple way we can compare Le Corbusier's position in the world of plastic, with Picasso.
Picasso re-invented himself many times throughout his life.
My father was finishing his studies. He did five years of pure science,
three art exams and five years of architecture,
all in record time.
In 1933 before he had even finished at university,
he became the only student ever to be allowed to attend the International Architecture Congress.
It was where the 'Athens Letter' was written.
The Congress took place on a boat that sailed from Marseille to Athens.
It was a small boat, the Patris II, and on board were all the big names of the time,
Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Jose Lui Sert…
The conference was particularly interesting in as much as the German presence had lessened.
The Germans has lost some of the influence that they had had during the period of social democracy,
and as a result the leading figure was Le Corbusier.
For Bonet Le Corbusier is of fundamental importance. As a student he studied him closely
and in his first years as an artichect he did the same from even closer up.
He was lucky that Le Corbusier liked him and that they established a certain friendship. Le Corbusier persuaded him to go to Paris with him,
although my father said that he hadn't yet finished his studies.
Le Corbusier told him that when he graduated he could go and work with him.
That was a great honour as normally you would pay to study with Le Corbusier.
So in June 1936 my father finished his studies
and on 30th June he caught a train to Paris, 18 days before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
I remember the day that the war began perfectly well.
On the day before, it was after supper on 17th, I was out on the balcony with my father getting some fresh air
and I asked him: When are we going to Sitges? We always went to Sitges in the Summer.
He said: I don't think we'll be able to go this year. There are things that aren't really working too well in our country…
and the next morning was when the first shots were heard.
All the windows in the house shook and I was very scared.
Later I read that they had only fired nine shots but it felt like a hundred to me.
It was never-ending.
And it was very stressful as well. You heard the shot
and then a whistling sound,
which you knew meant that something was flying through the air towards you and might land on top of you.
I was terrified.
My father arrived in Paris on 1st July 1936.
By train. And with just a single address in his pocket, Le Corbusier's studio,
where they had been expecting him since 1933.
To survive he worked as a window dresser at the Galerie Lafayette.
He made posters for painting exhibitions.
He does everything and anything and even sells pencil portraits of people in the street.
Whilst he was in Paris work began on the Republican Spanish pavillion.
Its architects were Jose Luis Sert and Luis Lacasa
but the only one in Paris at the time was Dad.
He was also the youngest. As a result he became the artichect that oversaw the project.
This was a significant twist of fate
as he spent practically every day on site
and was able to get to know and make friends
with Picasso, Dali, Miro…
with all the greats of that time.
There was a convent that had an exterior patio with a fence.
And there they opened all the tombs and took out all the boxes, opened them up and put them on public display.
It was a horrible thing. I saw all this and it really traumatised me.
For many years I couldn't get those images out my head. I would see the coffins and the corpses all around my bed.
After a certain time we went to live in El Prat…
and they bombed there, too. But it wasn't so bad as we lived in a house with a cellar where we were able to hide.
Whilst I was in el Prat they closed the schools, so I spent all day long playing and having a great time…
In Le Corbusier's studio he strengthened the friendship he had not only
with Roberto Mata but also Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Kurchan.
Those last two great Argentine architects had been working with Le Corbusier for quite a while
and the three of them clicked immediately and formed a special bond.
This helped him when he realised that he had to leave Paris and that he couldn't continue being there.
The Nazis were arriving, or at least they would very soon,
and there was no future in the old Europe.
He had to decide where to go…
There's a letter that Bonet wrote to Torres Claver that is full of anxiety. Sert's partner,
who had been his friend and boss,
saying: "I need to do things". I'm going to Buenos Aires,
because that's where they're building.
Because at the end of the day we need to stop arguing and to finally get down to some work.
José Luís Sert decided to go to the United States.
Luis Lacasa went to Moscow.
Kurchan and Ferrari Hardoy told him:
"If you go to Buenos Aires, remember that when you get off the boat there will be someone there waiting for you".
His arrival in Argentina, by boat in Buenos Aires, was very different from his arrival in París.
The architect friends of Kurchan and Ferrari Hardoy were waiting for him as they had promised.
And in Buenos Aires he met my mother, an exiled Catalonian, also in Argentina.
And he also met the man who would be his father-in-law and who was like a second father in exile.
In October 1938 he presents what will be his first project,
the house of artists amazingly forward-looking and mature was for new and modern inhabitants
on the corner of two streets: Paraguay and Suipacha
Paraguay Suipacha is a synthesis of what Bonet learned with Le Corbusier.
The rigidity of the structure and the freedom of the façade.
At the age of 26 Bonet had completed what was to become one of the most important projects he would ever do.
Bonet uses a type of irregular vault, that is to say, an asymetric vault, a very 'free' vault.
The curve has echoes of the BKF chair, which is the chair that Bonet designed at the same time as this building.
It's one of the great successes of the BKF union.
BKF stands for Bonet, Kurchan and Ferrari.
It's one of the most reproduced designs in history.
During the war Joan Prats was mainly occupied with saving works of art.
He never got involved in anything to do with war or politics.
But the postwar period was very tough indeed.
The repression was hard, betrayals and accusations were the order of the day.
To be accused of anything was enough to have you put in prison.
It was obligatory to go to church and if you didn't go, that was a reason to put you in prison.
And the only way out of prison was after a court martial.
Court martials were simply: innocent or guilty.
If you were guilty you'd get the death penalty. If you were innocent, they'd let you go.
Things were like that for many years.
Prats was imprisoned having been accused of something.
Just a few months before his death he discovered who it was that had betrayed him.
It was a competitor, a rival maker of hats… In his case his imprisonment was terrible,
There were ten of them in a small cell meant for just two.
He explained that the most dramatic moments
came at 5 or 6 every morning
when the cell door would open, some bloke would come in and read out a series of names.
Those that left never came back.
In 1945 he gets his biggest project so far,
a 1500 hectaire development in Uruguay, called Punta Ballena.
And, recently married to my Mum, they take the brave step of going to live in a jungle,
in the hunting lodge of a family called Lussich.
Just them, and 1500 workers.
They lived there for 3 years in order to fulfill my father's dream, to make a Paradise out the place.
And he very, very nearly achieved it.
In the end part of his earnings he took in the form of a grand house that he built for himself.
La Rinconada.
Both of them had dreamed of this house for a long time.
A house hanging over the sea.
And then the dream died.
The value of the Punta Ballena site was not what Dad had hoped it would be
and he had to leave the project and return to Buenos Aires.
In around about the year 1952 or 1953,
an important architural critic called Sigfried Gideon
wrote a book called: "Ten years of modern architecture".
The book traces the modern architectural movement up to the present day.
Bonet features very often and appears in all three parts of the book.
The Punta Ballena project appears in the chapter on urban development.
The chapter on architecture features the…
I think it's just the Berlingieri house, the house with the vaults.
And in the design section, the BKF chair.
Up to a point we can say that by the time he was 40 or 42,
Bonet already has an impressive body of work,
he is widely acknowleged and his work is used as a reference for others.
Bonet has already formed a reputation in Argentina.
At the age of just 36 he has established an important evolutionary pathway.
He realised all his hopes and dreams,
he was able to complete all his projects
and as a result he never wanted to give up his Argentine passport.
He always said that he owed his life, and above all his professon, to Argentina.
Just imagine. It's 1949, or from 1956,
and Spain is only just emerging from a cultural hinterland.
A bourgois like Ricardo Gomis goes and finds an architect like Antonio Bonet,
they both meet in El Prat, a place that had for some time been going downhill.
And together they had a dream like that…
The name 'La Ricarda' comes from the name of the nearby lake,
one of many other lakes that there are in the area, in what is left of the delta of the river Llobregat.
When our parents decided to build their own house just as they wanted it,
from the various other options that they had,
they chose the part of La Ricarda estate that had been left to my Mother.
Mum and Dad talked long and hard
about where they were going to build the house as there was the possibility of building it in Sitges…
In the end Dad went along with what Mum had wanted, which was to the build the house at La Ricarda,
because her family already had houses near the beach and she wanted to be near her siblings.
The idea was to build a second home
but they had to find the right place and to decide
which architect was going to be in charge of the project
My father had wanted it to be José Luís Sert
but Joan Prats had told him
that Jose Luis Sert wasn't interested in undertaking any projects in Spain.
Joan Prats mentioned that there was a young architect
called Antonio Bonet Castellana who lived in Buenos Aires
and who had collaborated with Sert in the building of the pavillion in París.
It seems that they met for the first time in 1949
when Bonet was passing through Barcelona on his way to CIAM in Bérgamo.
There was the obvious disadvantage of the distance
and also making the journey was difficult.
But either for family or business reasons my father used to go Latin America.
Antonio presented an initial idea
but my mother explained to us that it was too grand
and that she wanted something more simple.
Something that wouldn't make life more complicated for her.
My father consulted my mother very often and my mother would say to Antonio:
"no, no, no way at all we can have it like that…"
Then Antonio would have to explain and would say:
"no Inés, you'll see, you'll see what it will be like…"
And until my mother could see it clearly, nothing would be done.
They were both lovers of cutting edge, vanguard design and also of comfort.
They loved what was practical but at the same time beautiful.
The first letter that we have dates from 4th February 1950.
A letter written by hand by Bonet: Dear Inés and Ricardo.
Bonet addresses Ricardo and Inés in a very familiar and close way, in a friendly and caring way….
The interesting thing about this correspondence
is how long distance agreements are made between the different parties
In any building site you have the client, an architect, a builder, a quantity surveyor…
You have different personalities and from a distance there's potential for confusion…
What is very interesting is how the letters maintain a business-like tone.
They don't waste time with anecdotes, even though they know eachother well.
Perhaps they leave that for when they see eachother.
But in the letters, there are orders to work.
We'll do this, this needs to be managed, we'll rethink this…
The documents become a record of the progress made
and copies are sent to all parties.
Clearly they were building a house for themselves and doing it with enormous energy,
but also they doing something more than that.
The build lasts from when they meet and takes 14 years to complete.
That's a lot of years.
It is really fascinating to see how they maintain their enthusiasm.
They were doing more than just a work of art
in the sense that it represented the whole of the modern architectural movement.
The letters show such an energy and passion
to keep going and to complete the house that it seems that they started just yesterday.
The Gomis Bertrand family wanted to make a perfect house.
As they said in some of the letters, the house has to be perfect.
We will surely enjoy it ourselves, our children will enjoy it even more.
I think there was a real willingness to enjoy the process.
To do what needed to be done, to do it well and to do it perfectly.
Two personalities come together with ambition
and with the desire to build the house as well as posible.
Very obsessive…
One was an architect and the other an engineer and they were very similar.
Demanding, perfectionist, a bit grumpy.
Very absorbed in their own creations.
Ricardo in his music and my father in his architecture.
Everything that came into the house was very carefully chosen
and nothing came in that both Antonio Bonet and Ricardo Gomis didn't agree on.
Except for an enormous loud-speaker.
Antonio arrives at the house and says:
"Ricardo, this loud-speaker is as big as a piece of furniture, it blocks the view and breaks the lines of sight…"
and Ricardo Gomis's reply, more or less, was: "For once music wins out over architecture".
Bonet was able to be very relaxed leading the build from far away and by letter
because he had a fantastic team.
Most important was the client, who was his greatest help on site.
The perfection of that house.
The rationality of that house.
It is surely the combination of those two people,
of the love that they had for eachother.
And of their endearing friendship, with a simple look, each understood the other.
My father had the strange habit of doing his site visits on a Sunday morning.
There were no workmen, no builders, sometimes not even the owners were there.
He used to like wandering around, observing the site and taking notes.
When I was very small and he started to take me on a Sunday morning
it was like a family outing for me and my Dad.
One one occasion I was playing outside and he took me into the unfinished living room.
He told me to stay there and to play as he had to go and look at a few things.
He went away and after a while came back for me.
I stayed there, happy, playing on the floor.
Years later,
I asked him about that place and about the scale of it.
And he told me that sometimes he, too, was scared and that empty spaces could make him feel uncomfortable,
they could make him think that he had got things wrong.
And he told me that once he had used me as a guinea pig.
That I had been playing outside at La Ricarda and he had come to find me.
He had made me go into the living room and had left me there and had told me to play.
And I asked him why he had done that.
And he said that if you had felt uncomfortable, if I had got it wrong,
you would have moved towards the walls and you would have looked for refuge,
like a wounded animal.
And yet you didn't. You stayed in the middle of the room, playing happily.
That meant that I was right and that I hadn't made a mistake
because inspite of your age you felt comfortable in that space and I had got the scale right.
The house is situated in an area of dunes, very close to the sea.
One of the things that Bonet considered was this platform to make the ground level.
That's what he built the house upon.
This is a flat platform, like a pedestal,
and there on top of it he puts the pavillions.
This platform is what keeps the house one metre from the natural terrain,
the terrain which may one day see the water table rise.
So this small surface that lifts the house is what supports the structure.
The four legs that the deck has,
these thin pillars that are holding up the flying deck
what they actually contain…
what makes it possible for them to holp up the deck is a structure
that is hidden in this platform.
It is a structure of pillars and beams, as you can see here,
They are all connected to eachother
and they make it possible for the pillars to be very thin and to hold the deck up, floating in the air.
Being Antonio Bonet's daughter
wasn't easy.
It was a privilege but from very young it wasn't easy.
To separate the man and the architect is absolutely impossible.
They were the same thing.
He was self-critical.
Very hard on himself.
Very consistent.
Very rational.
He didn't want to depend on anything.
Neither did he want to depend on anybody.
This sometimes distanced him from people.
It made him seem hard and inflexible.
He always wanted a tranquil life
and tranquility meant that everything had to be in its place.
That everything was lovely.
People, words…
If in your life you surround yourself with things that are beautiful,
stable, consistant, tranquil, peaceful…
you start behaving that way yourself.
He taught me to be independent.
He taught me...
that it wasn't important whether I was a man or a woman.
To be consistent with my ideas until the very end.
I never expected a pat on the back from my father.
The one time when I did ask him for one,
when I had done something really special,
he said:
"Do you really need people to praise you?"
In this model what we see is the roof as an independent object,
placed midway between the pine trees and the ground.
It has a transitional function and acts as a kind of link between the canopy of the pine trees and the ground.
The roof functions almost autonomously.
We could talk of the house from the roof down.
In my opinion the house takes on an American dimension.
What do I mean by American dimension?
To me it means not just a very big house
but also taking on a far reaching project in an untouched environment.
Diverse in terms of landscape and also intellectually.
The house is organised as a series of modules,
which are these vaults. Each vault is a module.
In total there are twelve modules,
one or two of which offer independent space for the family members.
In the twenties, in Germany, rationalists would analyse
the use of a house in terms of the percentage of time spent in different parts of it.
In the movement between those parts.
How long do the children spend sleeping, or indeed the whole family.
When do they come together to eat.
It is a type of conquest of this space, of this floor.
On top of which features are placed which define its use.
If you consider the whole of the living room there is just one big fireplace.
But it is extremely well positioned.
It is a focal point that defines the space. Here's another…and another…
The most important thing is the position of the rugs that act like islands
and define different sub-spaces in the interior of the dwelling.
Rationalism looks to rid itself of anything superfluous.
Of anything that is unecessary.
There must be a reason for everything.
A clear, objective reason that leaves frivolities to one side.
That doesn't mean that at any given time that things can't be added to make a building beautiful,
absolutely not.
But always for a reason. A good structural reason.
If you have a pillar you can use it as a chimney.
But the pillar is there because it is structural.
I think this comes over clearly when he said
that characters need a stage and a set design.
Other people need a space in which to live.
It is interesting to see how the house is organised zonally.
It is divided into separate rooms.
The children's module is separate,
it is where the children live their lives,
where they have their cloakrooms, their bathroom, their bedrooms, their playroom
and also an outside area. It's like a mirror.
The house is transparent in two senses from outside and from inside.
The bond between my parents and the architect, and the architect's family,
was very strong…
they were very well tuned into eachother.
There was something that my father decided…
We all spoke French very well because we had been educated bilingually,
which was quite normal then.
But my father said that it was essential to be able to speak English just as well as French.
And he said that if we thought we'd learn English after university we were wrong and that we wouldn't,
so he sent us all to England for a year before we went to university.
He said that later nobody would ask us when we finished university.
It doesn't matter if you're 21 or 22 when you finish,
but in today's world speaking other languages is a really important advantage.
Both my parents made it very clear to us that we had to be completely independent.
Life is a tricky business and we had to be able to look after ourselves.
My mother was always a tremendously open women,
with an eagerness to learn and to improve.
She passed that on to us.
Our parents module is this one here.
They have a small living room, bedroom and bathroom.
It's an independent module separated from the rest like a satelite
and connected via a glass walkway.
The living room is also transparent, a continuation of the garden in front of it.
We can talk of spaces that are reflections of the world outside.
In those days these big windows were very modern and technologically ahead of their time.
Some enclosures have three distinctive materials.
The first is the vitrified ceramics, which are opaque.
Secondly, the transparent and tinted glass, which allow the inside/outside dynamic.
And thirdly, wood, which is normally used as a support and as a protection from the sun in unfavourable orientations.
To complete the picture, a material used underneath the vault
which is the ceramic lattice combined with glass of different colours.
This is a very important feature of the house as it makes...
it creates different light and shades of light both inside and outside.
We can also see here the idea of Bonet as a cartesian,
of a very funtional Bonet, with more conventional materials
and a Bonet that invents new materials such as the ceramic lattice work combined with glass.
Inspite being an enormous house it is not ostentatious
and there is a balance between all the spaces.
Although all the spaces are very big there is the feeling that everything is balanced
and that everything is very well proportioned.
This module is the office and the dining room.
This module opposite the dining room is another dining room for the summer.
It is interesting because it is incomplete.
It contains trees and moves the dining room towards the garden.
It may be unfinished but it is important as it extends this dining room towards the other one.
They were so meticulous.
For example the table in the dining room is sunk into the floor and cannot be moved.
It's made of a large piece of wood on top of two columns.
There's no electric light.
There are two small holes in the middle of the curved ceiling above the table...
and the light from these holes illuminates the table.
So when they are having supper, anyone around the table is in the dark but the table is well lit.
There are touches like this everywhere…
The kitchen is completely mechanised…
It was all fabulous.
This is the kitchen, the washroom, the servants quarters.
These two modules are for the security people, groundsmen and the garage.
The house has different ways of leading the eyes.
These long corridors that run along the walls lead the eye towards the outside.
Similarlty the diagonals are very special.
We look towards the inside and we see the outside.
We look across the interior spaces and find that we're looking at the exterior spaces…
What is really nice is that through this opening and along this wall here,
the view is uninterrupted from one end to other end.
When we enter we can see the sky immediately.
Because of how these modules are built the outside is invited in.
They are features that take over the whole place, that allow nature to enter
and also that organise the way in which the family works.
It is this spatial gradation that shows us how an architect like Bonet
works how he works with his surroundings on a global scale,
as he has in the case of other projects in cities,
and also on the smallest most meticulous of scales.
He even designs all the objects inside the house.
The furniture, the door knobs, different utensils.
Everything together.
It's that utopian and almost revolutionary visión of the modern architect.
Why not just say it…
that think that modern architecture exists to change the society in which it lives.
From the city to the furnishings, to everyday objects.
For Bonet La Ricarda represents a rediscovery of the culture
and landscape that he left when he was young and that he knew so very well.
It is also the rediscovery of a generation
that takes up cultural activities that had been truncated by the civil war.
In the same way that the house allows the outside to come in,
this was also the way in which life was experienced inside the house
and mirrored our parents mentality.
The house was always open
and always welcomed all types of people.
I remember very well the easy and friendly relationship,
the dialogues between this group of people, the Club 49.
Those that I remember, Joan Prats…
A quiet person with a very soft voice.
He always had his pipe.
And a very warm way with people.
An exceptional, incredible man.
He had an openess of spirit that it would nice to see in more people these days.
And… a mutual desire amongst all of them to communicate and to understand.
And he was always a presence in the house.
In anything related to art and cultura.
It was then that I met Ricardo Gomis.
Prats had wanted to get the whole thing off the ground
and knew that Gomis loved music,
especially contemporary music, so it was he that he spoke to first.
That's how the Open Music section of the Club 49 began
in Barcelona's Hot Club.
In '62-'63 Ricardo told us that the house was at an advanced stage
and he invited Prats, Tàpies, Brossa and myself to visit.
And he got us to listen to a record that had just been released...
"Das Rheingold", the first of the tetralogy. Then he put the the last one on…
when Wotan goes up to the castle of Valhalla… and we were astounded.
It was like we had an orchestra there with us in the house.
Incredible.
Then he said that he would like to hold an opening ceremony in the form of a concert
and that the music would be from the Club 49 Open Music section.
So we put a programme together in which there was a piece from Gerhard, a good friend of his,
another from Homs, also a good friend,
and one of my pieces. That's when we started to become friends.
I think it is important to understand that all the activities that took place in the house, including those of Club 49,
were in response to a feeling, in my parents and in many others,
of disappointment at the cultural dessert that was prevelent at the time.
In this opening concert the piece that I wrote and presented was called "Divertimento La Ricarda".
It was a piece for flute, clarinet and doublé bass
and because the performance space was so unusual I had the idea that the musicians should come and go and move around as they performed.
I called it 'Divertimento' ('Entertainment') as I thought it would be amusing to see musicianswalking around
instead of following the normal convention of entering, greeting, taking their seats and playing.
Of course this then led to me thinking
that the movement and attitude of the musicians could add a theatrical component to the performance.
My father wrote me a long letter – not something that he normally did – explaining in detail how it had gone, who had been there
and also the fact that it had coincided with President Kennedy being assassinated
and they had held a moment of silence out of respect.
One of the things he wanted when he built the house was to have a music room.
He even considered having a separate building especially for music.
In the end though he used the house and the room in la Ricarda contained all the loud speakers and equipment necessary for making music.
Music was a part of life and was heard and listened to constantly.
The quality continually improved as better loudspeakers produced better sound.
But also the silence in the house was a thing to be enjoyed…
Dad would listen to absolutely anything,
from Thelonious Monk to John Coltrane, from Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald.
Every Friday afternoon he would come in here and listen to music until late at night.
My mother would normally come with him but on the rare occasions that she couldn't she would say to me: 'go with him.
He won't pay you any attention, but he'll know you're there.
Just be there and let him see you…'
Dad would turn up, put on his music and not stop until two in the morning.
And then I suggested to Brossa that we should do something together.
We put on the "Concert per a representar".
It was a small group of 5 or 6 musicians and a conductor.
The conductor was Swiss but lived in Barcelona and spoke perfect Catalan. He was called Allain Milloud
and the musicians were the ones that usually played for us.
We also used all of Gomis' sound equipment and speakers.
We put the loud speakers on each side of the audience
and it was a huge success.
Playing where we were, with the vaults and so on, the sound was incredibly good.
They played one piece in which there was live music from the musicians and different, recorded music from both the sides and from behind.
The audience was surrounded by sound.
I think that Bonet is a kind of "ultimate Indian".
The characterisation of an "Indian" is of someone who at some point and for whatever reason has had to leave Spain.
Someone who left and who did really well in Latin America and then came back.
Such people are part of comtemporary Spanish history and are seen with a certain suspicion. They are put in quarantine.
They have to prove themselves and demonstrate that what they did was purer than pure.
He is a person whose passion and vocation takes him into exile,
who triumphs whilst he is away
and when he returns, excited to be coming back, he is welcomed
but his legacy is not acknowledged in the same way as that of local architects.
He came back happy from where it was thought that he had experienced the tragedy of being in exile.
To a certain extent, at the beginning, Bonet's exile was a tragedy for him
but it also presented him with a series of opportunities that were very important.
And so this destiny of being the returning Spaniard, the 'Indian', I hope it stops soon
and that Bonet can be considered, as is his right, as part of the history of 20th century Spanish intelligentsia.
Today we can still talk about Bonet. His work interests us.
This cartesian, orthodox, rationalist vision and at the same time an impetuosity,
it has been said a kind of run-away creativity, the ability to resolve diverse problems.
This enormous ability to see the city as somewhere that man lives.
Throughout his career there is just one question we can ask:
"How do we want contemporary man to live?" In a home or in a house...
It was really hard to keep up with him.
He would start work late in the mornings, at 10 o'clock, but in the evenings he didn't work regular hours.
Any time was good for work. He wouldn't stop for lunch or for supper… he could easily spend his whole time working.
When he started to become ill, he fought against it. Even the doctors were surprised at the length of time he fought the illness off.
And in the end he wasn't really with it when he said his final goodbye to God.
These long, hard illnesses are terrible.
Looking back I have the feeling that he was a man who used the experiences of not being able to finish a project as he would like,
of not being able to complete them as his perfectionism demanded of him,
that these experiences were an incentive for him to take on the next project with even more enthusiasm and to get it absolutely right.
The next project will be done. The next urban project will be done.
I'm sure that if he had achieved everything when we was young,
and he said this himself, that he wouldn't have had the same determination and fight inside him.
His next project was always going to be the best. The best ideas were always to come.
That's what he battled and fought for constantly. Always looking for a new focus, for new things.
Progress is a good, personal progress is good. Creative and spiritual progress in a man
who believes in his principles and who believes that we can live in a better world, in a world that is more attractive, prettier…
more beautiful.
What does the future hold for this house? That's the key question that many of us are asking.
It would perhaps be wrong to maintain this house simply for the sake of it.
I think that the local authorities should intervene. Whether it's the local council or the Catalonian government
it should be maintained as a cultural centre and be a place for artistic experimentation.
Not just musical but for all types.
Of course it's up to everybody to ensure that the house is preserved. To preserve the house funds are required. Money is needed.
My hope, if I had to say one thing, is that the house becomes a cultural centre.
And that it has the same spirit of openess as the people who were involved in building it.
This house deserved to be restored. Its influence deserves to extend beyond when it was built and beyond now.
When our parents died all the siblings agreed that this FAD award winning house cannot be allowed to fall down.
We cannot pretend that things stay as they were or that they have the same use as when they were made.
The house must not be a relic, like so many other castles and ruins.
As a reminder of what has been, of what was done and that those times will never return.
What I wouldn't want is for the house to remain abandoned as, let's say, a relic. It shouldn't be an empty monument to be visited.
Because I believe that a house is filled with the lives of the people for whom it has been built. Those people fill all the spaces, they fill it completely
and only then does the house have meaning. Only when a house is emptied can it really be separated from life.
What I would like to happen… taking into account the spirit in which it was created on the one hand
and all that we have learned in terms of information and opinions on the other… is that the house becomes a museum
because it really is a reference point for rationalist architecture in Spain.
What this house needs is for all institutions to get involved. Above all the public ones.
What would be ideal in my opinion is for the house to remain private
and for it to be as open to the public as it is now and for architects to be able to visit and so on…
that would be ideal. But I appreciate that would be very difficult with a house of such dimensions.
Otherwise, then, something cultural. Catalonia deserves it. And Barcelona even more. I think that the least that could be done...
the least that could be done is for the sound of the aeroplanes from the airport to be reduced to a minimum, it's killing El Prat de Llobregat
I think that the house should become a cultural centre, a place for the illustrious to visit
and many other things that both Barcelona and Catalonia deserve. 618 0-1 day, 23: --> 0-1 day, 23: Subtitles by Nicolas John Clark
Architect. Restorer of La Ricarda.
Architect. Restorer of La Ricarda.
Antonio Bonet's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's son
Musician and composer. Member of Club 49
Architect. Restorer of La Ricarda.
Architect. Restorer of La Ricarda.
Antonio Bonet's daughter
Musician and composer. Member of Club 49
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's son
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Architect.
Architect.
Antonio Bonet's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Ines Bertrand's daughter
Architect. Restorer of La Ricarda.
Architect. Restorer of La Ricarda.
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Musician and composer. Member of Club 49
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
Ricardo Gomis and Inés Bertrand's daughter
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