Just when we thought that we had closed a cycle which CASA ROC, TWIN HOUSE, and ROC CUBE, one of the old apartments on the same building became vacant ahead of what was expected, so G-ROC became our fourth intervention on the building. With three similar interventions finished, it was easy to identify a common denominator in terms of solutions, therefore defining and strengthening the distinguishing traits of this assignment.
Salva46 is our investigation into flexible co-existence.Exploring the nomadic lifestyle of the 21st century. Where movement and fluidity contrast with privacy and stability.
An experiment in shared micro living – two equally balanced spaces pivoted by a central communal area. A play of opposites in a world of conformists.
The main decision has been to construct the new building under the old existing garden and not to occupy a part of this space. The motto with which the project was presented in the ideas competition was “Garden of Light”. These two words sum up the two ideas of the project: maintaining and improving the existing garden, while at the same time providing joyful and well lit spaces. The library inserts under the garden of Vil∙la Florida civic center under the shade of its trees. Inside, a landscape in itself, articulated and changing, where each use and each user find their place. It is a personalized and unique space.
From the outside, the vertical shutters draw wooden strips over a sight of a rich green hedgerow and a leafy bush. ¿Are they just the outside trees reflected over the windows panes? ¿or are these transparencies?
To step in this former commercial space turned into a loft, we need to open a wide and generous solid “Iroco” wood set of double doors with iron fittings custom made at the owner´s iron foundry. And as soon as we set foot over the natural oak parquet, we are welcomed by a huge “fish tank” without fish, were leaves and green blossoms float in amidst almost liquid light. We are not talking about the typical bamboo reeds, nor about the very solemn Zen like interior garden, but about an arrangement of local trees of varying heights over a bed of pine bark splashed over by a cascade of light beaming from a false skylight. Surrounding this spectacular garden: The whole house.
Article source: Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura
The Generalitat and the Institut Català d’Estudis Mediterranis, ICEM wishes to create an important and prestigious cultural institution, the Mediterranean Cultural Center. Located in Barcelona, the M.C.C., will be representative of the cultural and economical dynamism of Catalonia, and will consolidate Barcelona as the capital city of the Mediterranean Culture.
The intervention takes place in the middle of one of the densest neighborhoods in SantFeliu de Llobregat, near Barcelona. A working-class neighborhood, grown around the old textile factories, wall to wall, with humble dwellings of the workers themselves. The demolition of one of the last factories still standing was used to build underground parking to supply the district of La Salut , leaving in the place where the factory was a large gap in the form of concrete cover for this parking.
The project of “Santa Madrona” deals with an urban space, where two apartment blocks with an affordable renting price have to be placed, nearby a small public square of the Gracia neighbourhood of Barcelona. The intervention had to place also, a public equipment on its ground floor, with a specific area and some specific leisure spaces. So then, the project had this interesting challenge to propose in one hand apartment blocks with an affordable renting price, with all the facilities that were needed, an urban space intimately bounded to the block’s life and an equipment that will promote the so necessary mixture of uses.
Article source: Alonso Balaguer and Associated Architects
In spite of the fact that the former bullring, in disuse since 1989 and with a neo-mudéjar style, didn’t actually have high architectural value, it was clear that, being poised in such an impressive location for more than a century, this site was really in the minds of every citizen, and its symbolic value lead to a suitable preservation. That’s why the architectural answer, already from the first outlines, was orientated towards its maintenance as a second skin of the new building. Nevertheless, such preservation met great technical complexity: first, an evident physical deterioration; second, a strange height, four meters above the nearby streets. The technical effort was worth it, in the end to present a strong, atypical cylindrical form.
The building of Heribert Salas’ (1926 – 2011) house in Via Laietana 49, Barcelona in 1926 could never be considered a finished project and the clash of what was then considered a modern building within the weave of Ciutat Vella left wounds that have taken over 80
years to heal.
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