La Comunal Cooperative Space
Barcelona ES
LACOL arquitectura cooperativa
2019
Type
Civic
Tags
postindustrial spaces , community infrastructures, architecture for the commons, New European Bauhaus, transparence
Visitability
Allowed
Description
La Comunal occupies half of the block between the streets of En Blanco, Tenor Masini and Riera d’Escuder. It is a cataloged building by the town hall, and urbanistically it is misaligned with the urban fabric of the place. In 1926, it was three years before Barcelona received the 1929 Universal Exposition. That same year, line 1 of the metro was inaugurated. These are the years leading up to an important time for a city in its way to be infrastructured. This is the context in which La Comunal was built, first to be a warehouse and later, a textile industry.1 SUBTRACTION AND RECOVERY OF ORIGINAL GEOMETRYThe volumetry prior to the work had blurred the original shape. What is now a courtyard, walkways and accesses was a fully built and enclosed ground floor. The first phase of the intervention was to recover the initial geometry.2 MITGERA EQUIPADAThe party walls of the neighboring building become a façade when the common spaces are built at its end shaping the patio. 3 REHABILITATIONT OF SPACESThe warehouses, except for the restaurant and the concert hall, receive a minimum treatment where the priority is to consolidate the whole structurally and to make flexible the possible ways of occupying them with modular and adaptable facilities. On the outside, it has been im-portant to study the original composition of the façades to intervene respectfully.4 PATIO AND CIRCULATIONSThe new work gives up an optimal floor plan to achieve a courtyard and circulations that follow the original alignment of the complex. The courtyard, with the multipurpose room that forms a unit, is understood as the stage of a theater where the walkways, which act as balconies, surround it.(Description provided by the architects)