HOUSE IN A PAST PRESENT
There were several circumstances that bring up a change to the focus of that restricted competition, which proposed the establishment of an Ateneo de Fabricacion, Creación y Innovación on two floors of a residential building built in 1872 in the middle of the emblematic Montcada street in the district of Ciutat Vella from Barcelona. Finally, in a wider action, the idea of an athenaeum was abandoned, the restoration of all the existing dwellings was proposed and cleaning the facades and the common elements was brought forward.
Despite the expected private focus of the new action, the idea of betting on enhancing the wealth of the blurred threshold that exists in this environment between public and private space was not abandoned. Between the interior and the exterior of the site.
For this reason, permanently open gates invite visitors to enter from the street into a well-groomed lobby that leads through a ceremonious route into a central patio in which the new vertical connection is located. For the curious to remember the medieval structure of the context and the new inhabitants access their noble plants.
Once up, vilely shaken floors pose a meticulous work of archeology, in which it is of interest to strip all the false added to see what elements still enjoy the privilege of lasting over time. Thus, once the space is stripped, grand stone lintels appear hidden under incongruous façade cladding, splendid Nolla mosaics and hydraulic pieces of great chromatic richness buried under inconsiderate pavements and eloquent rosette ceilings fanning the ghosts of a seemingly magnificent past.
Just when the greatness of space seems to have been put back into action, it is decided to pose carefully a sort of artifacts that in a certain balance introduce into the space a housing program according to a moment of time that perceiving the past allows living the present.
For now, some first approximations to the text:
SITE
CURRENT FAÇADES
CURRENT INTERIORS
SAMPLES
POSTICHES
INTERIOR PROGRAM PROPOSED
