Month: February 2019

  El Xalet de Catllaràs is a mountain refuge by Antoni Gaudí completed in 1905 for workers of the Asland cement company owned then by Eusebi Güell, Gaudí’s principal patron. It is situated in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees at an altitude of almost 1400 m. Getting there requires hiking (or mountain-biking) 10 km uphill along a forest trail out of the small rural town of La Pobla de Lillet (where Gaudí also designed a private garden for the textile industrialist Joan Artigas). The refuge sits all by itself on a small plateau in a clearing in the forest; a context that is radically different from the rest of Gaudí’s oeuvre. No tacky souvenir shops; no fast food joints whatsoever. When I went there with my hiking buddies on a recent weekend, there was nobody else to be seen anywhere for miles. Together with the snow and freezing cold temperature, it felt almost like being back in Canada. Indeed, at first sight, Gaudí’s 1905 refuge is reminiscent of those 1950s North American “A-frame” cabins that are also typically situated in forests, except that Gaudí’s “A” has a rounded apex as well as curved stems, and is not a frame structure at all, but a masonry vault based on the geometry of a catenary or funicular, which Gaudí experimented with throughout his career. Despite their structural differences, both the North American...