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Architects: Dear Design Studio
- Area: 2312 m²
- Year: 2016
- Photographs: Aitor Estevez
Text description provided by the architects. The new Creative Research Park of Barcelona is located in the Canòdrom, an emblematic rationalist building designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Bonet i Castellana in 1961, that used to work as a greyhound track.
After the building refurbishment in 2016, Dear Design Studio won the competition for the building's interior design, and also proposed the corporate identity and signage design, to give the project greater coherence. The challenge was to adapt the facilities of the former greyhound stadium to its new function as a flexible and dynamic space for startups and technology companies in the creative and cultural industries. At the same time, Dear Design proposed to stimulate the neighbourhood by including technological interventions that reflect the processes developed in the building.
The interior design project seeks to develop the flexibility and dynamism of the different spaces, preserving traces of the building's history. The central idea is to respect and honour Bonet´s minimal architecture and through a discreet and careful intervention. Dear Design responds to the need of a “hub” office that encourages interaction among its users and promotes the current ways of working: flexibility and adaptation of the spaces that allow the mobility of the user.
Dear Design also intervened in the visual identity of the project, which features concepts of speed, movement, progress and technology, which graphically results in the irregular decomposition of the typography into vertical lines of different thicknesses and separated by diverse distances.
Warm materials like wood and wwcb acoustic panels were used to contrast with the preexisting steel structure and concrete floors and to create comfortable and pleasant space.
The furniture used in the intervention is a clear nod to the architect Bonet. The suspension and foot lamps, designed by Dear Design, combine two original structures of the BKF chair, an original design of Antoni Bonet, with a flexible fabric skin. The pre-existing colours of the original building, yellow mustard and light blue, are recovered in the table lamps, designed by Dear Design, in the metallic structures of the tables, as well as in the vinyls of the facade that protect the offices from the sun.
