Change with out destroying: an outdated textile manufacturing facility to unite the neighborhood | From the shooter to the town | Culture | EUROtoday

Today El Vapor is an important heart of virtually 4000 sq. meters in Terrassa (Barcelona). There, below the tutelage of the Prodiscapasitats Private Foundation (Prodis), there coexist a catering college, a middle for individuals with cerebral palsy, a theater, an out of doors agora with gardens, an city passage open to the general public, a canteen and some of the lovely eating places on the earth, 73 Finestres, which gives job alternatives to individuals with mental disabilities. It is just not solely its menu, or that civic and human gesture that makes the restaurant unforgettable: the framework of wood trusses designed by the architects behind the restoration, H Arquitectes, imprints closeness, heat, shade, respect, care and humanity to the place.

It occurs within the restaurant, but in addition in the remainder of the services. This undercover facilitates the lighting, acoustic and temperature management of this finalist challenge for the Mies van der Rohe European Community Architecture Awards. Beyond humanizing the conversion of an outdated textile manufacturing facility right into a neighborhood social and cultural heart, wooden redraws the dimensions and closeness of the structure itself. And he does it by respecting her, making her communicate.

The inclusive heart that at present occupies the outdated Vapor Marquès warehouses is entered via a recovered passage that’s at present a brand new pedestrian avenue within the neighborhood. That passage is called after Pere Baltà, the president of Prodis, the inspiration that manages the inclusive heart, for 16 years. Pere was the daddy of Sonia, one of many younger girls who come to the Cerebral Palsy Center.

If the architects of the H Arquitectes studio have proven one thing, not solely now however via works comparable to their successive single-family homes, the social housing in Palma de Mallorca, or Gavà or the Civic Center in Sans, it’s that mild and bricks have so much to do with it. Authors of an structure that appears to be made by hand, right here they prolong this craftsmanship to work with wooden that includes each contact, restore and enchancment in addition to the seek for structural adaptation and spatial group.

Care with the outdated and heat within the new. The new Prodis headquarters occupies an emblematic outdated industrial constructing within the neighborhood. It’s true. But now it’s extra true as a result of it has gone from being a white elephant – a big closed area – to changing into porous, open, semi-public, built-in, walkable and pleasant services. Thus, past the passage, that central axis that organizes the venue, the middle has a canteen and gardens, with exhibition halls and a theater. Everything is open to the general public. Everything is interconnected and, on the identical time, there are ranges of privateness. Everything is handled with the identical materiality: the prevailing bricks, the strengthened trusses, the brand new wood extensions to offer scale, mark hierarchies of use, nuance the lighting and conceal the passive air-con programs with out damaging the unique manufacturing facility.

The wood beams, perpendicular to the trusses, assist to protect them and create a brand new structural order able to enclosing the areas with better privateness. Thus, right here the monumental scale of the unique constructing coexists with a brand new home, or domesticated, scale that’s nearer and extra human. Because? Because the identical useful resource used to restore trusses is used to cover passive programs and to arrange area and lighting with skylights.

The brick has additionally been dignified. In the areas the place it had been plastered, it has been stripped to advertise coherence and share the identical materials reality. The result’s a constructing that’s energetically virtually passive and socially very lively. A complete property and zones, an area between an exterior and an inside able to constructing bridges, therapeutic urbanism and together with all residents.