Apartment Building and Learning Center In Barcelona,Spain
Situated next to the Port, the Barceloneta District has a privileged position within the city ofBarcelona. As part of the urban renewal motivated by the Barcelona‘92 Olympic Games, several and intensive urban interventions were made to revitalize the district and open it towards the sea, making it one of the most heterogeneous, touristic, and culturally rich areas of the city.
Our project sits on one of the closed street blocks of the district. A lineal building destined for housing reconstructs the perimeter of the block while the interior square is consolidated by a public learning center for children.
The entrance to the learning center’s playground, the apartment building’s lobby, and the underground parking ramp is made through a single, covered, double height passage way in order to allow a better visual relationship between the street and the interior of the street block.
The residential building is a lineal block set between two other buildings. There are small commercial spaces on the ground floor, while thirty apartments are distributed on the upper five levels. There is also a two-level underground parking.
The two different facades are resolved according to their urban condition and orientation.
The south-facing facade is composed by a rhythm of voids made by the balconies, which hollow the volume, protecting the interior from direct sunlight during the summer. On the last floor and on the west side of the building, the balconies cantilever to better harmonize with the neighboring building and finish off the façade’s composition.
The interior facade, which is oriented towards the north and is therefor not as luminous, is made up by exterior runways that allow access to the apartments. An expanded metal stainless-steel mesh, almost invisible to the eye, is used for the railings to maximize natural illumination and ventilation.
The typical apartment, with two bedrooms, is completely articulated by a central core that contains the bathroom, a fully equipped kitchen and a series of closets that face each of the resulting spaces. This core divides the living quarters in three different zones, which can be completely adapted according to the owner’s needs, thanks to the fact that the bathroom can be accessed from all three, and that the connections to the living room through wide sliding doors are both symmetrical and equivalent.
The public building, a learning center for children, sits where an old industrial printing house once stood on the interior square of the street block. It is an L-shaped structure, anchored between two party walls, consolidating the interior of the block and simultaneously defining the playground area, which is accessed directly from the street through the exterior, double height passage way. The playground is paved with rubber tiles and a cylindrical volume that allows the underground parking to ventilate naturally, articulates its center.
The learning center has two facades that are configured by the rhythm of the skylights that illuminate the classrooms. These skylights are cladded with expanded metal zinc plates through their entire length, reaching down almost to the floor, leaving more transparent sections between each of them that, depending on the breaks on the glass, create access doors between the playground and the interior, windows for ventilation, and fixed glass panels that allow for better monitoring of children playing outside.
The learning center is accessed from a spacious lobby from which two different corridors lead to the offices and classrooms. Each of the four classrooms has their own skylight and a direct visual connection to the playground. These can be transformed into six, smaller, independent classrooms by means of large sliding doors. The rest of the building contains administration offices, a teacher’s lounge, bathrooms, a storage room, and mechanical rooms.
Each of the interior elements is differentiated through the use of materials. The lower ceilings are covered with sound absorbing panels in expanded metal, while the higher parts, belonging to the skylights, are covered with drywall.
Rather than being two different projects, the two buildings are unified on a single operation as a whole, interacting with one another and with the neighborhood thanks to a grand opening on the facade. This intervention has consolidated an emblematic street block within the Barceloneta district, linking neighboring facades from different times, leveling their height, and giving sense and purpose to their interior.
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Contact information ：15801944574 Wechat : luo51513710
