La Caseta Desmontable GATPAC

COAC

23/01/2003. (Sala 209)

The Detachable Hut. GATPAC

The Collegi d’Arquitectes de Barcelona shows an architectural proposal of GATCPAC (Grup d’artistes i tècnics catalans per al progrés de l’arquitectura contemporània) developed during the years before the Civil War.

J. L. Sert and J. Torres Clavé launched a project designed for the most economically disadvantaged classes and their right to rest and vacations: The detachable hut.

It consisted of a small, affordable house that could be placed anywhere, among pine trees, in the beach or in the mountain, even on unpaved ground. A house for the weekend, of very reduced space, that could be bought and assembled in 8 hours. And thus have a quiet place to spend a few days, or even a few hours, outside the city.

A house reduced to its minimum expression, with a simplified plan that gives the impression of contact with the sun, the earth and the air: a construction free of social prejudices and the academic forms used until then. The exposed model responded to the concept of a detachable house for the beach, within a broader global project that aimed to develop other types for the countryside and mountains, allowing the user, for its reduced cost, to have the freedom to choose a preferential place to enjoy leisure time. 

Functionality, standardization, universality and economy appeared in the demountable houses, in an exercise of intellectual balance that sought to find the roots of the modern fact resorting, once again, to the invented tradition.