Projects

The proposal seeks to improve the old textile settlement Cal Vidal by emphasizing the qualification of its urban spaces from the precise and concrete intervention in each of the existing housing blocks. These are used as a base from which to develop a bigger, more comfortable series of apartments, to be rented or bought as second residence by families from Barcelona city. The housing is therefore always changing from block to block as the different qualities and structural condition of each existing building gives way to different typologies and thus different ways of living.

The new proposal also tries to generate contained public spaces, proposing sequences and tensions in the moments of transition. It seeks to control the dimensions and proportions of the existing spaces, creating new distances that generate a new relationship between the parts which today are too homogeneous and have a dull spatial proportion amongst them.

We believe that an urban fragment that has city-like qualities and that makes this environment an interesting place to live must have a structure that contains unpredictability, surprise, tension, variable distances, unexpected changes of scale, repetition but also exceptions. In short, all the elements that are the basis of attractive cities to live in.

10 strategies guiding the proposal:

1. Intervening in the blocks to define the urban space.
2. Cutting or fragmenting buildings that are too long.
3. Closed spaces. Semi-private patios.
4. Corners and edges.
5. Second apse behind the church.
6. Dissolving the buildings towards the landscape. Towers and sports courts.
7. The landscape enters Cal Vidal.
8. Connection of two civic spaces: the large and the small cloister.
9. Articulation of openings.
10. A great pedestrian axis.