The habitable sculpture. Mary Callery's house in Cadaqués. Peter Harnden and Lanfranco Bombelli, 1961

Abstract

Peter Harnden and Lanfranco Bombelli were two architects who, after the Second World War, worked for the United States government, organizing exhibitions to promote the Marshall Plan from the American embassy in Paris. After a trip to Madrid in 1956, on their way back to the French capital, advised by their friend Coderch, they stopped in Cadaqués. Salvador Dalí lived in this town and Marcel Duchamp spent his summers there from 1958 onwards, attracting a long list of intellectuals and artists, turning the small town into a first-class artistic center. The place and its cultural atmosphere seduced the architects, who spent their summers in this town from 1958 until their respective deaths. Harnden and Bombelli would build nine houses in Cadaqués that were perfectly integrated into the austere and vernacular architecture of the place, following the criteria of the modern movement. One of these was for the American sculptor and friend of Duchamp, Mary Callery. The article analyses this house and how the criteria of Concrete Art, an artistic movement to which Bombelli was affiliated, were applied to it.