The chalet

A few months ago, we had some clients at the studio who wanted a chalet.
We exchanged glances with our colleagues as we spoke with them. It had been a long time since anyone had asked us for a chalet.

The most recent clients had requested houses. Some were primary residences to live in year-round, others were second homes, vacation houses outside the city. The truth is, the intended use of the home usually comes up in the first conversations. But in this case, the chalet, as they called it, was immediately associated with a weekend home. Nobody lives in a chalet.

I remember the first time I heard the word. I must have been seven or eight years old, around the end of the 1970s. My uncle bought a plot of land near Maçanet de la Selva—back then, nobody called it a “lot” either—where he intended to build a chalet for the weekends.

For our family, it was groundbreaking news, something beyond our reach, even our imagination. Like most people, we spent our vacations at relatives’ homes in small towns or camping. I guess that, at that time, my father drove a maroon Seat 124 Special, which he paid for in monthly installments. It was our all-purpose vehicle, vacations included. I remember the day he installed a trailer hitch on the back to pick up a brand-new Hergo Gacela caravan, also paid in installments. A house on wheels that would follow us everywhere and provide the best years of our lives.

The announcement of my uncle’s chalet—or “chalé” as he called it—was beyond our comprehension. We lived in a rented apartment in Barcelona’s Clot neighborhood and barely managed to pay school fees at the end of the month, so the idea of buying a second home was unimaginable. My father argued disdainfully—and I shared his opinion without a shadow of doubt—that why would anyone want a fixed house when they could have one on wheels and take it anywhere? What a marvel, Dad… Even Roberto Benigni couldn’t have said it better.

The thing is, over time, people started building chalets. The 80s arrived, and traffic jams at the entrances and exits of major cities became commonplace. In Barcelona, a city turned away from the sea, with no beaches, no ring roads, and virtually no green or recreational spaces, people escaped on weekends, fleeing the city. Traffic authorities launched “Operation Exit” and “Operation Return,” cheesy language we grew accustomed to, reflecting the scale of the exodus.

Those who could no longer afford to build chalets began buying apartments in residential blocks. They left their city flats only to move into another in a suburban development in a town, by the coast, or in the mountains.

In an undoubtedly more precarious city, people’s nomadic nature emerged effortlessly.

Our campsite in Blanes, once untamed land subject to the whims of the Tordera River and its delta, eventually became surrounded by residential blocks, staring down at us defiantly, as if we were Arapahos in a repartitioned ghetto. Sant Francesc Cove, that wild beach where we grilled sardines on summer nights, filled with chalets and open-air parking lots.

Our house on wheels became relegated to summer vacation adventures, mostly in free camping. The Pineta Valley, Ordesa, or Benasque, places that, back then, were still beyond the reach of mass tourism. But its inactive winters in a caravan cemetery delivered the final blow until we got rid of it.

Fortunately, the city changed during that time. The transformation of Olympic Barcelona left a legacy of beaches, open spaces, and cultural offerings that gradually drew in its residents and other tourists. In a city open to the sea, the urge to escape on weekends was no longer as pressing.

Today, many young people don’t even own cars, partly because they’ve become increasingly expensive and come with more costs, but also due to a certain shift in mindset. Public holidays in the city are no longer the desolation of decades past; nowadays, not even in August. People like the city. They don’t see staying over the weekend as a punishment, just as they don’t see owning a chalet to spend Sunday mowing the lawn or fixing the roof as a privilege. It seems there are other priorities. Houses, like cars, are for living in.

Nonetheless, despite all the virtues of a more orderly and safer city, there’s something about that Vázquez Montalbán-era Barcelona that makes me nostalgic. Perhaps it’s the fragility of places like the Barceloneta’s beach bars or the clever fishing spots people created in tiny gaps between the rocks of the breakwater. A city where you could stumble upon a bonfire of old furniture on every corner during Sant Joan festivities or climb over the Claret school fence to play football until late. A city where the urban and domestic landscape was created through appropriation, like territorial conquests. In an undoubtedly more precarious city, people’s nomadic spirit surfaced easily—a primal exploratory attitude that has made us conquer the world and drives us to discover others.

Around the time we bought our caravan, the Italian architect Aldo Rossi was building his Floating Theater of the World in Venice for the Architecture Biennale. The theater even crossed the Adriatic to Dubrovnik. I like to think it might have said something similar: “Who would want to perform in the same place when you could sail anywhere?”

Maybe it’s time to face the design of our clients’ chalet boldly, by putting a pair of wheels on it.