Rosa

The Real Estate Boom House can be considered a paradigmatic example of the architecture of the Real Estate Bubble in Spain for three reasons: first, the house’s original design, materials and construction details reveal the imaginaries of opulence that drove the boom; second, the privileged views over the old town from the house’s back façade are menace by the boom’s reactivation; and third, the house’s domestic interior attests to the radically different generational sensitivities that have lived through the boom. This refurbishment project attempts to highlight these three conditions through a single operation: the staircase of the house is restored highlighting the original materials and details, while these ‘boom remnants’ or ‘ruins’ are filled with plants, to serve as a possible substitute to the house’s endangered back views. In “Rosa,” filmmaker Joana Colomar follows the house’s users to explore how the project interweaves tradition and modernity, as well as notions of high and low technology. The title both refers to one of the project’s main architectural strategies—the overall use of faux-marble’ pink color (“rosa” in Spanish)—as well as one of the daily routines of the owner of the house, who everyday trims a rose (“rosa” in Spanish) from the back garden.