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 mountain does not need architecture. If we build here, the burden of proof is ours.
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.
