Case study — Landscape
Refugi Boira
Vall de Núria, Pyrenees · 2025
Site study: the boathouse that has stood on the lake for a century — proof of how little the shore needs.
- Location
- Vall de Núria, Pyrenees
- Year
- 2025
- Type
- Landscape
- Status
- In development
- Area
- 5 × 38 m²
- Role
- Architect — currently on the boards
- Client
- Withheld
- Photography
- Site studies, placeholder imagery
Boira means fog. On this lake shore at 2,000 metres, weather is the client: the brief asks for five refuges that can host walkers through the season and disappear — literally — when the concession ends.
Each refuge is a timber cabin on six ground screws, prefabricated in the valley and assembled in a week without a crane. No concrete is poured on site. When the thirty-year concession expires, the screws back out and the meadow closes over.
The cabins hold to one section — a warm sleeping loft above a stone-floored day room — rotated on each site to frame a different fragment of the lake. A shared bathhouse sits apart, sunk into the tree line, its roof a continuation of the forest floor.
The project is in technical development, with assembly of the first refuge planned for the coming summer. The photographs here are site studies from a year of seasonal visits.
