A Roiba, a house that sails the sea. The refuge of Ramón Vázquez Molezún

Abstract

In Molezun’s refuge in Bueu, the structure reveals certain conditions and strategies common in other houses overlooking the sea. The way they look at what is facing them is characteristic of the twentieth century. This architecture speaks in two voices; it speaks of its firm union in terms of its articulation with the ground and also of the interaction between the interior and exterior in a concrete structure exposed to the sea. What is built is a refuge for the summer related to its own surroundings in the same way as a ship built for sailing the seas. The idea springs from the elements present there, the sea and stone. With concrete, these elements produce a delicate and rounded union with the primitive granite. The logic behind the building of this shiplike refuge is the superposition of the mass of concrete, fastening the store of stone to the rock to form a podium with the structure of cantilevered porticos, the fusion with the place through the ramp, the cut of the existing terrace and the open spaces behind, and the multitude of accesses to the house. A Roiba is like a boat that sleeps upon the small maritime infrastructure that shelters it.