A Summer Series: Seaside Houses
#26 Bernard Rudofsky, La Casa, Frigiliana, Málaga, Spain, 1968-1972
Bernard Rudofsky (1905–1988) and his wife, Berta, constructed La Casa, a home in the small town of Frigiliana, Málaga, Spain, towards the end of the ‘70s. Rudofsky was a multifaceted character—architect, theorist, designer, curator, professor, entrepreneur—who generated an influential discourse based on his observations of the way human beings inhabit and satisfy their vital necessities. He defended the value of popular wisdom and vernacular architecture (as shown in his book Architecture without Architects) and revolutionized the world of fashion with his brand of sandals, Bernardo Sandals. After a long search, he found the place he had spent years looking for on the Spanish Costa del Sol. It was here that he would build a house to spend his summers in. La Casa beautifully links the rural landscape that descends towards the Mediterranean Sea with a fragmented architecture of distinct volumes and patios.
“Frigiliana is not only a perfect display of the world Rudosfky captured in “Architecture Without Architects”, it also draws on certain shortages of his liking, like the hypnotizing decline the village was in the 1970s. Tuning in his intervention with this unique vernacular environment, he reclaimed pleasure and knowledge as key construction materials. This is can be seen in details like the removal of the backs of the seating areas, converting them into horizontal surfaces, some of which he would call “Morning sunbath” or “Evening sunbath”. In addition, Rudosfky developed different eco-centric tactics, such as using, in his drawings, a similar legend to describe an olive tree or a room, or by articulating the rooms through radically orthogonal paths, measured out with clay tiles, recalling the natural field. A hedonist sense was also accomplished through the use soft materials and ephemeral situations such as the swimming pool canopies, the summertime mosquito-net rooms which colonize the pergola, the rugs, the stools, the shadows… Even the reed blinds constructed by his wife, Berta, who in some ways activated Bernard Rudofsky’s domestic imaginary, take part in