Site Specific: Vallirana 47

VORA Arquitectura - Barcelona, 2019

VA Vallirana 47 is a modest refurbishment of a small residential building in Barcelona, finished in 2019. The building is quite anonymous and discreet. Its value doesn’t lie within a singular identity, but in the sense of continuity of an epoch. Our work consists in the refurbishment of 5 of the 6 dwellings in the building and the common spaces.

Inspired by the client’s approach to conservation and preservation, we sought to arrive at a high level of hybridisation between the new and the old, to an extent that we had not achieved before. We worked with the identity of the building in a way that is both continuous and disruptive, with a respectful and at the same time playful attitude.

The new spatial arrangement is superimposed on to the existing one in an expressive way, through friction and displacement. Pavements and ceilings incorporate the order and hierarchy of the original spaces, while the partitions express, at the same time, part of this memory, as well as the transformations made.

The intervention, in a material approach, tries to hybridise with the pre-existing. Many materials and elements of the building were reused, which maintain the atmospheric continuity. Everything that was added links with this continuity, from the most tactile aspects to the most abstract ones: glazed tiles, application of graphic patterns extracted from the building's grids, wall papers, etc. Within this sensory approach we tried to incorporate the stratification of qualities that characterised the residential buildings of that time, specifically in the detail of some coatings and elements.

Finally, we built a density of layers of perception and information in the interiors, which provides complexity and vibration. Meaningful vibration for those who want to interpret it, which at the same time generates visual comfort; delineated from the smooth and anonymous surfaces, so the future tenants will feel at home from the very first day.

Elaboration and Repetition

VA The pictures and drawings that we have collected for Building on the Built present the process behind the creation of the ornate surfaces we used for the bathrooms and kitchens of Vallirana 47. They are an outcome of the strategy of ‘hybridisation”, linking the new spaces to the character of kitchens and bathrooms in common domestic spaces in the beginning of 20th century, but also to specific details of the building itself.

We extracted a pattern from the protection grills of the building's lower windows, made of steel mesh. This pattern was applied to glazed tiles and cabinet doors.

VA The bespoke glazed tiles were produced by Cumella Ceramics from white glazed semi-industrial tiles, of their own production. A layer of semi-transparent colour was added before the final firing, which gives them a rich and vibrant depth of colour. In the sensory approach to materiality, we also incorporated the idea of stratification. There is a gradient of color intensity on the tiles, through different levels of transparency, from the most intense (at ground floor) to the most ethereal (on the top floor).

VA The cabinet doors are made of lacquered MDF boards, on which the patterns were engraved by CNC machines before lacquering. The graphic patterns engraved on the furniture also follow the strategy of stratification: they are fully excavated on the ground floor, “drawn” in thick lines in the first floor and composed of thinner lines in the top floor.

NOTES

Published 3rd July 2020

Photography by the architects and, where indicated, by Adrià Goula.

For more on this project see the VORA Aquitectura website here.