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The architect Bernard Rudofsky (Moravia, 1895-New York, 1988) lived in many countries but spent his last days in Frigiliana in the Axarquía on the eastern side of Malaga province, where he built his last great work, considered the pinnacle of his career as an architect.
Casa Rudofsky, which he liked to call simply 'La Casa', perfectly sums up his vision of urban planning and life. Built without altering the surroundings, but adapting completely to them, it is a perfect example of how the several thousand houses that were built during the following decades on the hillsides of the Axarquía should have been, but are not.
The house, which was built in 1970 and has subsequently undergone several substantial alterations, was declared an monument of cultural interest (BIC) by the Junta de Andalucía in January 2011, after a group of architects, coordinated by the Granada-based José Guerrero Centre, started a petition to obtain this protection which was started in the summer of 2009.
After a few years in a state of semi-abandonment, after Rudofsky's widow sold it to an Austrian couple, the building underwent several substantial alterations. The new owners began a series of modifications which were initially halted by the Junta de Andalucía, which fined the owners, although it finally authorised the renovation of the electrical installation and the windows. However, the property has undergone further modifications, such as the perimeter fencing, which was not there in 2011, as SUR has been able to confirm.
The uniqueness of the property, located in the Los Cortijos de San Rafael area of Frigiliana, today totally surrounded by large villas and mansions , lies in the absolute respect for the rural landscape and its surroundings, for which both the abrupt topography and the original vegetation were preserved and inserted into the landscape. The building, located in the lower part of the Frigiliana hills, near Nerja and three kilometres from the coast, synthesises the author's theories on sensitivity to the environment, living within one's means and the contemporary recovery of traditional architecture.
The pines, carob trees and holm oaks originally blended in with the columns of the porch in a very particular harmony. No earthwork was carried out to avoid harming nature and the gardens were not landscaped, as has been the norm in the urban development of the Axarquía, especially in the last twenty years.
‘La Casa’ reflects Rudofsky’s objectives of making the most of outdoor space without losing his privacy. He did so by blurring the limits of the interior rooms and interpreting the outdoor areas as natural expansions of the house. It is completed by a patio configured as an additional room, which summarises and symbolises Rudofsky’s ideas about the sacredness of the private sphere. He respected the tradition of Mediterranean housing, which seeks beauty in its simplicity.
Now, the mayor of Frigiliana, Alejandro Herrero, has told SUR that in compliance with Andalusian regulations on BICs, the town hall is trying to get the current owners to allow visits to Casa Rudofsky at least four days a month. “We are in contact with the owners and there is a good disposition on their part, we hope to reach an agreement in the coming months and that this enclave can be another tourist attraction for Frigiliana and for all those interested in learning about this work of this prestigious architect,” he explained to SUR.
The journalist Antonio Pomet, said in a blog that in 2005, "Lisa Guerrero warned us for the first time that the house that Berta and Bernard Rudofsky built in Frigiliana during the 1970s was in danger." He went on to say, "This was the first contact that the Guerrero Centre had with the Austrian architect and which allowed us to discover that Bernard Rudofsky, also a clothing and furniture designer, researcher, photographer, editor, professor and exhibition curator, had built his summer residence, La Casa, a few kilometres from the house that the Guerrero family also had in Frigiliana, considered to be his vital and philosophical testimony and which constitutes his only construction in our country."
According to the journalist, "his work can be understood as a broad and heterogeneous essay on how to live in the world. We could consider him a renaissance man of the 20th century and, as an implacable critic of a society that has over-emphasised the self in order to pervert the enlightened legacy, a political and moral philosopher in the best of senses."
Pomet recalls that the José Guerrero Centre's effort to protect 'La Casa' "also served to understand that we were dealing with a multifaceted artist, an intellectual who displayed a fertile creativity. His works in the different fields he cultivated had a common premise: to point out the errors of some of the paths that the history of design and architecture had taken in the name of a supposed modernity and to propose truly modern alternatives for them that were often based on the simple and humble gesture of looking a little further back in time".
A decade ago the Granada centre published the book 'Bernard Rudofsky. Desobediencia Crítica a la Modernidad', fifty years after his most significant book, Architecture without Architects, to show a selection of his work and to act as a tribute to Rudofsky, to his wife Berta and to Lisa Guerrero, without whom the legacy of this "philosopher of modernity would perhaps have gone unnoticed," Pomet concluded.
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