The last urban development project by Antonio Bonet: the SOS village (1970)

Abstract

The SOS Children’s Village at Sant Feliu de Codines in Barcelona (1970), the Hifrensa village (completed), and the Prat I and II urban development plans (not completed) were the final major urban complexes designed by Antonio Bonet (not counting his projects for the tourist sector). At SOS, Bonet designed a residential ensemble for orphaned children comprising communal educational and sporting facilities, by recreating, on a human scale, the atmosphere of the villages depicted in the photographs published in issue 18 (1935) of the GATEPAC magazine AC Documentos de Actividad Contemporánea, which was dedicated to popular architecture. Whitewashed pavilions, vaults, porches, patios, walls and stone platforms arranged like agricultural terraces were the features by which he constructed the landscape of a modern village but with old-fashioned forms. In this paper we analyse this unprecedented work, which, although it was never constructed, expresses the architect’s singular interpretation of the countryside and habitability conditions for orphans. Moreover, this work concentrates the architect’s experience as an experienced urbanist who in the 1970s challenged his fundamental theoretical creed, the Athens Charter, from a historical perspective.