Interview to Bonet's daughter

Even though Catalans are not amused by being called Spanish, in the case of Maria Victoria Bonet, daughter of the celebated architect, she can’t be defined as any other that a Spanish woman: her immediate friendliness, her gestures, the amplitude of vocabulary when talking about a fact or character. When asked for a definition of her father, she does not hesitate to portrait him as a “profoundly good man and thus so sensitive, because these two qualities usually go hand in hand”. Mrs Bonet knows perfectly well what her surname represents for the world of architects and architecture, a world which she knows well, not only for being the daughter of who she is by because she studied architecture up to very advanced courses, but did not finish the career.

Like home.

That knowledge of the ground of the architectonic creation made her grow like any other architect since she worked with her father in his studio in Barcelona until a few years ago, when he decided to close it because he wanted to retire and that decision had to be respected. Her mild expression of sadness when intendant Arana inaugurated the Bonet exposition in the Atrio Municipal, makes one think that Victoria must have been really close to the master, “very close, I was there for him every time I could, and that’s why I miss him so much”.
She also regrets not having been there in the yeas of urbanization of la Ballena because she was just a baby, but instead she remembers one of the most painful journeys of her father: “It was when we came to Uruguay to sell La Rinconada, the house that my father had built in Punta Ballena, since it was destroyed. So much so, that my father didn’t want to go to Maldonado to see it, he didn’t wan to witness the damage, and all the proceedings were done in Montevideo, without even stepping Punta Ballena. According to Victoria, the damage was due to the fact that the famous house “had been shelter for guerrilla, they had used it to hide out, and it is best not to imagine the disastrous state in which it was in”. Urged by the requirements of the inauguration where she also conducted some words to the Uruguayan, Victoria Bonet has time, before she gets to the microphone, to deploy a reflection that she shares with her father, that she always had on the tip of her tounge: “Characters need a place to shine, to sparkle. Men just aspire a good place to live in”.
Admiration and respect are part of the warm memory of the daughter towards her father, whom she was besides to at every time. Resting at the Atrio of the intendancy in the famous BKF armchair, or African chair.

Historic recompilation combined by Ernesto Merzario. Any reproduction must be consulted and accepted according to regulations in force.