Barcelona
Lluís Clotet
Jesús Jiménez
Santiago Loperena
Anna Bohigas
Alfons Soldevila
In the center of the plot there was a water reservoir that had supplied the Güell’s fields, with 60 cm thick walls made of stone and brick. Given our obsession with leaving testimonies of history, we kept it almost intact. We placed the whole building inside it and kept its outer perimeter as a garden. On the semi-basement floor, apart from the restaurant services, we placed Antonio López Lamadrid’s apartment. This residence was developed around a private and independent courtyard.
On the upper floor, behind the parapet of the reservoir, a wooden chiringuito emerges, housing the enclosed dining room. In front of it, we arranged a south-facing winter terrace (in 2005, we enclosed this space for smokers with sails designed together with Alfons Soldevila). Behind it, there is a summer terrace in the shade of a trellis (or a cane canopy until the vineyard grew).
We designed the wooden structure of the chiringuito with our head engineer, Jesús Jiménez. He sized the beams based on breaking strength –not to maximum deflection– which, over time, has caused them to sag in a beautiful manner. The central beams are placed closer together than those at the edges, as the latter shorten their span as they approach the corners.
FAD Architecture Award 1978-1979
Photographs by Jaume Blassi, Lluís Casals and OTB