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Architects: García Floquet Arquitectos
- Year: 2009
Text description provided by the architects. Apartment building in Barri dels Velluters, a very degraded but attractive historic neighborhood. This is a private initiative that adds to a series of public proposals (social housing, facilities) for the recovery of the city center.
The project assumes the responsibility for the environment, and responds to the current housing problem. We design for a program of 19 minimal units, between 30 and 50 square meters. The ground floor is intended for people with reduced mobility.
The dwellings go beyond their small size: they are designed with minimal partitions, dispense with circulation areas in favor of living room areas, and the relationship with the exterior is intensified. Window openings that work in pairs are liberated from the interior distribution of the dwellings. On ground level, the units adapted to people with reduced mobility rework their relationship with the environment by modifying their height with respect to the street.
Assimilation and alteration of municipal ordinances become key drivers of the project process. The required tripartite composition is split from the height distribution of the building levels, the base rises up halfway through the level of the windows of the first floor to give more importance to the ground floor. The vertical overlap of the openings established by the ordinance is reinterpreted by the continuity of the axis around which openings of a certain size and double the size oscillate alternately. The cornice disappears around the corner, generating different conditions on both streets. The traditional solid-void proportion on the facade is inverted to respond to a new, small dwelling, with high quality in terms of natural lighting. The rhythm and variation introduced on the facade facilitates a continuous perception of its surface, a “texture” that accompanies Viana and Torno de l’Hospital streets.
