Coderch’s Casa Ugalde

José Antonio Coderch (1913-1984) built this holiday home with his associate Manuel Valls for the industrial engineer Eustaquio Ugalde who had just bought a plot of woodland right next to the sea at Caldes d'Estrac, Barcelona. 

Ugalde wanted to keep the idyllic landscape as it was so Coderch designed a two-story house and garden made up of a set of volumes that met the original brief, that is to say perfectly integrated in the natural environment. Completed in 1952, it is considered a key piece in the architect's aesthetic evolution.

The views over the sea and the landscape of the site determined the building’s construction. It sought a space for itself in the middle of the forest, where it rises discreetly, respecting the environment. The house is a sequence of bleached curved walls that fuse with the ground opening frames onto the landscape. 

Local materials were also chosen, those typical of Mediterranean popular architecture. The same flooring of red terracotta tiles is used indoor and extended into the terraces and for the roofs. The use of Catalan construction traditions is combined with more modern architectural forms. While inside all the walls are straight, the outside is dominated by a curved wall that separates the house from the wood. 

The organic layout of the building adapts to its surroundings as a continuation of it, maintaining the horizontal reference plane, so that interior, exterior and landscape are related through it, the space flows continuously between the walls, reaching infinity.