Ever since the Iberian and Roman settlements, the natural port of Salauris has been a strategic location on the Catalan coast from a military, commercial, and, from the second half of the 20th century, a tourist perspective.

Essentially a fishing town throughout history, Salou welcomed its first holiday-makers as early as the 19th century thanks to the push of Reus’ new bourgeoisie society, gradually transforming the fishing village into a small spa town. The construction of several modernist houses on the seafront at the beginning of the 20th century sowed the seeds of the city’s subsequent large-scale tourist expansion.

Sixty years after the tourist boom in Salou, how should temporary housing be approached today, and how does tourism have to respond to the social and environmental challenges we are facing?

Eschewing the generic global housing model oriented towards summer vacations and commonplace since the 60s tourist boom on the Costa Dorada, the new apartments are designed to remind guests of homes: warm, residential spaces rooted in local culture that can be occupied any time of year and designed to be used as permanent residences in the near future.

The new housing project consists in rehabilitating an abandoned building and seeks to establish a dialogue with these first holiday-makers and their palaces from the beginning of the 20th century on a conceptual and material level. The project offers an alternative lifestyle to mass tourism: a slow-paced, familiar and local model, seasonally adjusted and rooted in the original spa and architectural tradition of the site.