Music School Project Concept “Taller De Musics” / Dom Arquitectura

Architects: Dom Arquitectura
Location: Can Fabra, Barcelona
Architect In Charge: Pablo Serrano Elorduy
Interior Designer: Blanca Elorduy
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Jordi Anguera

Project Area: 1,273 sqm
Engineer: Eduard Parera
Rigger: Jose Mª Navarro
Constructor: Tascó, estudi de construcció
Collaborators: Enginyeria Tescor

The project consist to enable a music school, in the Can Fabra Cultural Centre third floor. The building was historically a textile factory. The project posed a significant challenge: to do a music school on top of a library. That supposed a great acoustic difficulty.

We had a very defined program, that give us the Higher Education School minimum requirements about classrooms numbers and their surfaces. Therefore we propose a distribution based on maximum use of available space.

All the classrooms separates 1,8m from the building exterior walls, allowing a perimeter access, and creating a comfortable circulation around them all. It is intended to avoid the contact and vibration transmission to the building.

Each classroom is formed as a independent volume, separate from the facade, the roof, the floor and the rest of the classrooms. They also will be acoustically insulated, preventing sounds transmissions between them.

When we start the proposal, we didn´t want to ignore the music spirit. After carrying out an intensive study of the musician, their needs, their learning, the instruments, the philosophy, we tried to capture a proposal with all these conditions. Notes, rhythms, silent spaces, chords, patterns, pentagrams, inspire us to the project.

The rooms are austere, in the interior, with white and grey colors, to facilitate the musician concentration. In the interior the installation are visible to maintain the acoustic insulation without any hole.

The outside classrooms walls are raised with formica colored panels. The panels are placed with a continuous rhythm in all the walls forming also a soft color gradient. They make attractive spaces appropriate of a youth students centre.

In the common areas we place a slats ceiling, like a continuous pentagram or piano cords, to cover the open roof building and all the centre installations.