Torre de Can Bonet is part of the Modernisme artistic movement, reflected in its structures, openings and decoration. Its main feature is a building built from a plinth, which in this case is made of well-fitted stones. From this work, which surrounds the entire perimeter of the house, the walls completely painted in white start, that is, where the opening elements and decorative elements have been arranged.
The structure of the house forms a confluence of protruding bodies from a square plan. All the rooms have access to the outside through windows or balconies, which represents a maximum use of natural light (one of the principles and concerns of the time). These bodies all have a ground floor, a main floor and an attic.
The type of openings, always based on more or less elongated rectangular windows, is one of the most successful examples of the building, due to the shape of the upper part and the use of exposed brick. On the ground floor there is a combination of round arches and trilobed and pointed variants, with the upper brick framing in some of the cases simulating the typical discharge arch. There are two entrances - one is the main entrance to the house and the other is an exit to the garden.
The main entrance has a rectangular door with a treatment of the layout of the bricks which depresses the opening to end in a kind of discharge arch and at the level of what would be the impost, where there is sgraffito decoration. At the top, the door has a protective roof (porch) of glazed tiles, supported by brick permodules and resting on the wall. Below and between the permodules there is a sgraffito frieze with the text "Ave Maria". The roof has a decorative crown of two balls.
The second door, considered to be the exit to the garden, has similar characteristics. It has a brick porch supported by columns and on the side attached to the wall.
Along the floor, you can see the alternation of windows and balconies with the typologies already described, only adding wrought iron work when it comes to the balconies. The balconies are cantilevered, the slabs are on the support of wrought iron modillions and the railing of vertical bars with circular decorative elements in volute. The upper part continues the treatment of the arrangement of the brick within the three-lobed variants. There are ceramic elements in the impost. At attic level, the openings alternate from two to three and some openings with different types of arches, both round and pointed.
Attached between the south-east bodies there is a square observation tower divided into a ground floor and three floors, with the gallery under the roof. Along its walls there are window openings corresponding to the typologies already described, as well as inside the upper part, where there are sgraffito corner elements and different coloured paint framing the open gallery area under the roof. The roof of the tower has glazed tiles combining red and green. Regarding the roofs of the other bodies, it should be mentioned that they are gable roofs covered by tiles with the same combination as before and a ridge perpendicular to the façade. The finish is in straight cantilever breaking the rhythm of inclination with support at each end by means of permodules.
At the back of the house, a protruding circular body (like an apse) stands out, intended for the smoking room (ubiquitous space in the distribution of rooms in the house and especially the tower house). It is circular in shape, as evidenced by its projection on the outside, and of a structure similar to garden gazebos as an isolated element of the house. The base is like the plinth that surrounds the house, from which round and smooth support columns decorated with white, blue and yellow ceramic mosaic forming an undulating pattern rise. The entablature is straight forward without mouldings of any kind and from the line of permodules a decoration is formed, first of undulations and spirals, and then a thinner one (a naturalistic effect that perhaps represents water). The sustaining permodules correspond to each of the columns in number and location, presumably the effect is decorative rather than sustaining. The tiles are combined in red and green.
On the main façade, at the level of the first floor and above the entrance door, on the right hand side, there is a statue attached to the wall on a plinth, as well as under a canopy, which is made of brick and a conical crown with ceramic mosaic coating.
The whole complex is a very successful work of the modernist architect to which we must add, for information purposes, a whole annex of water features that ran along the path from the top to the entrance of the estate, which gives that naturalistic spirit of movement and dynamism that fully characterised the phenomenon of Modernisme, the Catalan Art Nouveau.
SHARECROPPING
The country house is a building with a rectangular plan, taller than it is wide and which on its main façade shows a ground floor, a main floor and an attic. The entrance can be from the outside of the fence, at the foot of the road, or through the side façade within the boundary of the fence. The two entrances are rectangular doors protected by a roof of three trefoils and the upper one, almost non-existent, with glazed tiles and decorative crowning balls. The door of the side façade has the protection with a gable roof.
The window openings have a rectangular formulation. On the ground floor and on the main façade there is a pair of windows - in the "coronella" style - with a lintel arch with a depressed top (reversed funnel feel). On the floor, the rectangular windows continue, with a brick sill and an arch formulation, depressed by the arrangement of the bricks as well as the widening of the lintel giving the sensation of a curtain. In the attic opening there is a window with a lowered arch variant and closer to the discharge arch. The gable roof has little overhangs ending with straight ends. At different points of the façade there are perforated ceramic motifs with ventilation functionality.
To the rear of the house there is a lower body with garage functions as well as another auxiliary body below.
It is in the same style as Torre de Can Bonet.
Summer house from the end of the 19th century. It was built by Josep Domènech i Mansana (1916) for Mr. Manuel Bonet, who was from Tarragona and, after getting married, he moved to Barcelona, where he founded the House of Patents and Trademarks. His only son, Bonet del Rio, was deputy mayor of San Sebastián and of Barcelona, representative of culture and president of the Art Centre. After the Spanish Civil War they wanted to return to the house, but times had changed and they didn’t. Currently, the Generalitat de Catalunya wanted to acquire it.
