The noise of the cicadas is so wrapped and tantric that you are aware of being in a place full of non -human scale. At her rave Insects are added moisture, heat and horizons of reeds, dunes and high grass that disorient and induce a certain state of traffic. It is in this space to limit that it materializes between the pines, little by little and without pomp genes. Geometric and on the ground, the Catalan vaults of the ceilings floating on glass walls make the feeling of an order that scores the landscape without dominating it, and the metal reticles and wooden blinds make up the white light with a fair measure of brown. The paddle of the planes passing over you, is repeated every few minutes and laughs not to cry.
Casa Gomis lived forgotten, which is the other name for which the building is known and, above all, the denomination that receives this protected natural space from the Llobregat Delta, which has finally approved the Parliament of Catalonia. It was predictable that supporters of lengthening the track sacrificing part of these lands would relativize the value of Ricarda: the ducks that inhabit it have become a mem of ridicule environmentalism capable of pronounced ornithological diversity to economic growth. But the truth is that the opponents of the thing have decided to focus their arguments on the negative impacts of the extension on the life of the locals, tacitly accepting that with strictly ecological arguments it is not enough. The debate on Ricarda has made it clear that the question of which spaces are protected and which does not depend much more on aesthetics than on ethics.
Well, in these places in the dispute, in the middle of the Francoist postwar period, the Barcelona marriage Ricard Gomis and Inès Bertrand commissioned the construction of a summer house for rationalist architect formed with during the years of the GATCPAC and by Le Corbussier in Paris. It is an unbeatable example when you need to explain that the architectural is political: as cultured and committed patron, the Gomis chose Bonet to contribute to the continuity of the modern spirit and the Catalan tradition that the Franco regime wanted to annih. As Bonet had exiled in Argentina, the process was slow and phases, extending between 1949 and 1963 due to distance communication, the logistical difficulties and perfectionism of all those involved. It was worth it: for the collective, the Gomis House has ended up being an indisputable masterpiece of Catalan rationalism; For the family, the space became a happy home to live and a place of meeting, exchange and cultural experimentation outside the control of the dictatorship. Joan Miró, Magda Bolumar, John Cage, Carles Santos, Antoni Tàpies … The sofas upholstered in neutral, no arms, low, surely compensated the ego of the artists with a dose of horizontality.
But what was not able to load the repression loaded the developmentalism, which is well looked at is another form of dictatorship. Thus, the refuge of the Gomis House was crushed with the extension of El Prat Airport to adapt to the requirements of tourism, and put Barcelona on the map required to change the maps of Barcelona. The new third track, parallel to the beach, was built, a few hundred meters from the house, and the acoustic balance of a space that had been designed for contemplation and contact with nature was in order. Can we talk about sound heritage and ecomusal catastrophes? Gomis was a founding partner of Pro Music Discophils Association (1935) and had a state -of -the -art sound team at the house, with an area dedicated especially to listening. It is seen that after having his daughter, he lost his confidence in the voice, until one day Gomis invited her to Ricarda, recorded her singing, she listened to her recordings, and Caballé felt so well that she regained confidence in itself. Insects, sopranos and turbines.
But what can no longer be lived can be museumized. Gomis and Bertrand died between 1992 and 1993, the house went to the following generation, and the six children decided to keep it exactly as the original and maintain a program of visits and dissemination, until this year. The purchase will not stop the airport extension or the extension will physically commit the house, which, noisy, will become a tool for the museum to tell stories. Because the fact that jewelry like the Gomis house has never been comparable to those of the modernist canon is not neutral. While the ideology of Catalan modernism was a story of great monuments, a cult of beauty, excess and individuality, rationalism sought to separate from this philosophy with a democratic, economic and functional discourse designed for the daily needs of the working classes. and natural hierarchies, while rationalists believed that social and scientific revolutions would be able to make a new man and overcome the curse of inequality and scarcity. The Güell tell a relationship of the bourgeoisie with society very different from that of the gomis. The utopian projects of the past are a stubborn test that someone, at some other time, tried to change things.
Compared to or the headquarters of Gustavo Gili publishing house, projects designed for masses and work, the condition of bourgeois summer residence of the Gomis house represents the possibility of a luminous and hedonistic rationalism, the synthesis of opposing opponents as enjoyment and social consciousness, the response of the accusations of coldness and inhumanity with which the critics have always bombed with the evidence of the evidence with the evidence of the critics with undeniable of socialist beauty. I cross the door that separates the dining room from the garden, the animals continue to sing and the transition is so organic that there is almost no difference between the inside and the outside, between what is human and what is not. A plane passes; In the past we dreamed of future more horizontal than the present we are staying.
