Before & After: In Spain, an Architect Restores an Iconic Home Built by His Grandparents

Set on the northeastern coast of Spain, Cadaqués was once an isolated fishing village before it rose to prominence in the 19th century as a summer hotspot for Barcelona bourgeois. Over the years, it’s been home to Salvador Dalí and drawn all manner of artists—from Matisse, Picasso, and Duchamp to Mick Jagger and Shakira.

In the 1950s, a group of modern architects were equally beguiled, among them, Federico Correa and Alfonso Milá of the notable Barcelona firm Correa Milá Arquitectes. Correa and Milá would later be known for projects like the rehabilitation of Plaça Reial in Barcelona in 1985 and the Montjuïc Olympic Ring in 1984, but before that, they designed houses, many of which are in Cadaqués. 

Two of these homes have important place in history: Casa Villavecchia, an adaptation of a vernacular fisherman’s house in town, and Casa Rumeu, a dwelling set farther out in the surrounding hills. 

For Casa Rumeu, completed in 1963, Correa Milá Arquitectes departed from the traditional whitewashed buildings found in town, and looked instead to the agricultural walls in the surrounding countryside. "The town is completely surrounded by these drystone walls built over decades and decades for the olive trees," says architect Juan Gurrea Rumeu of Gr-os Architects. "This house is surrounded by these massive gardens of stones, so they used the local stone to build it."

While the material was traditional, and easy for local builders at the time to work with, the home’s plan was more avant-garde: it consists of three conjoined hexagons, with nary a wall at a 90-degree angle. "What’s very special about this house is that there’s this tension between building very low-tech, with local and traditional materials, but then you see this more experimental intention in the plan," says Rumeu. 

Before: Living and Dining Room