Manuel Valls i Vergés - Arquitectura Catalana .Cat

Memory

Arquitecte. Titulat el 1940. Un any més tard munta el seu estudi amb Coderch, aquesta col·laboració dura fins ben entrats els anys 60 del S.XX.

Source: Arxiu Històric del COAC

Works (25)

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Constellation

Chronology (30)

Pérez Mañanet House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Garriga Nogués House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Ugalde House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

On a south-facing mountainside, Coderch chooses to place the house on a protruding point between two slopes, so that the panoramic angle is as wide as possible. The main traces are defined based on the topography, with a retaining wall at the back and a base platform with a circular profile. The guidelines of the walls are determined by the different angles of view on some carefully framed fragments: the four openings of the living room, the separation of the house with the guest wing and the porch below the master bedroom. Access from the street is accompanied by a small wall that connects with the general wall system. The living room, dining room and hall are located at platform level. The distributor on the upper floor is on an intermediate level and has a balcony over the living room. On this same level is the master bedroom. On a slightly higher level there is another bedroom and a large study oriented to the west and to the entrance. The project makes use of great architectural freedom in plan and section and pays very careful attention to the different points of view, which makes life in the house identified with the combined effect of the views and from the same house.
Dwellings for La Maquinista Workers' Cooperative

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

Within the imposing urban plot of the Barceloneta, the project proposes a concentration of the built part that allows the release of an important part of public space in the form of a central square, which generates an environmental sponging of the fabric. The houses are grouped in modules of three, completely exterior, with a minimum occupation of the façade thanks to the distribution solution. The use of oblique traces allows all living rooms to face the central space. This central space is articulated by the bevels of the façade planes combined with the successive eaves that appear between lock and lock. Only the secondary bedrooms are supported on the perimeter exterior façade, and this façade is deployed in such a way that the diagonal views are optimised, avoiding the excessively reduced width of the streets. The project was written by Coderch and Valls in 1951, although they are not responsible for the construction management.
Dionisi House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Casa Torrens

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
El Prat Royal Golf Club Service Pavilion

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Robert Terradas i Via, Manuel Valls i Vergés

The pavilion turns its back to the golf course and faces southwest, forming a body with two wings that house two distinct groups of functions. A main transparent area is accessed through the axis of the two wings towards the opposite façade, where the lounges, bar and dining room are located. On the north side there is the service staff wing, with its own courtyard, which contains all the openings. On the south side there is the second wing, which houses the offices and changing rooms. The pavilion responds to the landscape qualities of a golf course by means of a single-storey construction, glazed from floor to ceiling on a large part of the façade, and unified by a large flat roof that forms an overhang on most of its perimeter. This creates areas directly related to the exterior and well delimited below the treetops.
Casa de la Marina Apartment Building

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

The plot is located at the end of one of the long blocks of houses in the Barceloneta neighbourhood. The program had two dwellings per floor planned, with three double bedrooms in each one. Coderch chose to use stone and brick load-bearing walls for the structure. The geometry respects the line parallel to the partition, but is distorted very freely in the transverse direction and also involves the supporting elements. The result is an introverted home, with great rusticity and dramatism thanks to the bending of the walls, the texture of the materials and the filtering of natural light.
Casa Boada

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Senillosa House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

En un solar singular de planta quadrada i dimensions reduïdes, amb una sola façana practicable i una alçària de quatre plantes, Coderch ofereix una solució imaginativa per incloure-hi un habitatge unifamiliar amb cinc dormitoris. L’estructura és una caixa de pedra que fa la funció de mur de contenció. Els quatre nivells s’organitzen en dues crugies: la més gran allotja l’aparcament (planta baixa), el dormitori principal (planta primera), el menjador (planta segona) i la sala d’estar (planta tercera). La més petita allotja un dormitori individual a cada planta. L’escala comunica els carrers inferior i superior a través de tot l’habitatge.
Fiat Hispania Automobile Factory

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Catasús House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

The Vinyet neighborhood has a mainly flat topography, and Coderch chose to create a system of domestic spaces in this house, referring exclusively to the large garden of the plot, without any reference to the outside. Thus, the house is configured on a single floor and basically forms an L that embraces the garden. One of the arms of this L includes the bedrooms, while the other contains the dining room and living room. The entrance takes place behind the body of the bedrooms, hidden from the garden, and gives access to a third arm that includes the kitchen and restrooms. All the openings leading to the garden can be opened and practiced flat, or they can be closed with shutters of the same height as the factory-built house. Thus, the house becomes a set of areas on a single level where the garden unifies the main parts of domestic life, while the entrance and services remain hidden at the back and generate their own outdoor spaces.
Casa Coderch Milá

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
FAD Award

Award-Winner / Winner. Category: Architecture

Dwellings Johann Sebastian Bach 7
Dwellings Johann Sebastian Bach 7

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

The building responds to a program of four apartments per floor of about 200 square meters, in an urban area arranged in isolated blocks and separated by a minimum distance. Coderch takes care of the housing unit’s study and composes a building with two symmetry axes. The block has two equal façades that face the street and the back garden, and two side façades which are also the same. In the layout of the house, all the main rooms – including the bedrooms and bathrooms – are supported by the exterior enclosures, leaving the kitchen and the service rooms in relation to a central inner courtyard. Main and service traffic are well discriminated against, and they only cross at the entrance. The dining room and the living room have a gallery that combines sliding glass, folding awnings and fixed blinds in a lighting and ventilation device which is superimposed on the structure.
Casa Paricio

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Rozes House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

La casa es troba en un indret privilegiat, una punta de terra que penetra en el golf de Roses, amb vistes al mar per tres costats. Coderch opta per esglaonar la casa des de l’accés fins a l’extrem més llunyà, tot seguint la topografia de la rocalla en sentit descendent, de manera que tota la casa pren una configuració longitudinal. Al costat de l’accés, un pati organitza dues circulacions al seu voltant: la primera, que dóna al sud-est, conté la seqüència de la sala d’estar, el menjador i la cuina; la segona seqüència conté el garatge i les estances del servei. Totes dues seqüències es retroben en un punt on comença la sèrie de dormitoris, que culmina amb la cambra principal. Així, la casa configura l’orientació disposant totes les estances a llevant i assignant a la banda de ponent el paper de façana posterior, si bé es relaciona amb tot l’indret a través del contacte directe de les terrasses amb la rocalla, fins a arribar ben bé al mar.
Casa Uriach

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Apartaments Escursell

Manuel Valls i Vergés
Antoni Tàpies House and Studio

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

On a long, narrow plot on the outskirts of Gràcia, Coderch conceives a house in which the longitudinal and vertical dimensions are balanced out by fixed elements that break the spatial continuity: basically, two covered courtyards to the right and left of the plot, and two stairs placed transversely. The ground floor forms a broken sequence that goes from the access atrium to the workshop in the bottom, with a double height. The first floor is for the living areas of the house, and the second floor is for the bedrooms. The library forms a separate, weightless body, set back from the street alignment. The house forms a device to make the most of the scant light available through a vertical and horizontal façade of white-painted wooden slats, a light that reaches the interior, always absorbed by some facings that leave the dark tone of the brick factory visible.
FAD Award

Shortlisted. Category: Architecture

Antoni Tàpies House and Studio
Luque House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

Coderch solves the gentle slope of the land by means of a difference in level on which the house straddles. Upstairs there is the entrance and parking, a group of two bedrooms and the master bedroom with its study. Downstairs there are two more bedrooms, the day rooms and the wing where the kitchen and service rooms are located. The bedrooms located to the north follow the recess arrangement and the staggered section. Each different use of the house has its own façade, clearly separated from the others by means of the extension of the walls. Facing northeast, the house seeks light through a transversal axis that goes from the parking lot to the living room, and which has as its main element an interior patio that allows the entrance of light. This patio becomes a central nucleus that organises all circulations, so that the life of the house revolves around its luminosity.
Gili House

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

The peculiarity of the program leads Coderch to rehearse an unprecedented distribution organisation, on a plot neighbouring the Catasús house, built ten years earlier. From the entrance you reach a distributor connected to a patio that gives light to the central areas, and which is conceived as a semi-covered greenhouse. From here you can access the garden through a small porch, and the bedroom area through a second, completely independent distributor. The living room has its back to the parking plot and adopts a fairly closed configuration, although facing south and the garden. The dining room takes on special importance, being in the visual axis that crosses the whole house, from the bedrooms to the opposite façade, where there is a second semi-covered patio. Coderch conceives an L-shaped house, with a large central axis, in which the situation of each room is determined by its intrinsic configuration and by the position it occupies in the general circulation system.
FAD Award

Shortlisted. Category: Architecture

Trade Buildings
Habitatges Unifamiliars Vallcarca

Manuel Valls i Vergés
Trade Buildings

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

Coderch very clearly differentiates the ground floor are with the emerging volumes in height in a place located in the outskirts of Barcelona, with large, isolated buildings. In response to a large tertiary program, it projects an organism consisting of four four-leaf towers with very smooth curves and counter-curves. Three of the towers share the first two floors, with a perimeter that embraces them in a large unifying plinth. The curtain wall’s modulation is very narrow to allow turns and counterturns, and the modules travel around the perimeter following a sawtooth pattern. In the centre of each tower, the vertical communication cores are embraced by four large concrete pillars, complemented by series of equidistant metal pillars. The image provided by the towers expresses the mobility of a sector of the city which is marked by major traffic routes and isolated buildings.
Banco Urquijo Housing Complex

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

The project of an open-plan residential complex allows Coderch to define his conception of urban housing. The floors are grouped in pairs in three-storey blocks and form a set of six blocks arranged in a double axis of symmetry. The ground floors absorb the 5.5-metre drop between Raset and Freixa Streets, avoid shops on the façade and house offices separate from the street. The semi-public space between the six blocks is part of the same architectural landscape, determined by the cladding’s small tiles, the vertical blinds of exposed wood and the combination of the enclosures with profuse vegetation. The house extrapolates the stepped floor plan of the previous detached houses. A structure based on straight metal feet and reticular slabs allows to cut the perimeters of the slabs and distribute the surfaces regardless of structural requirements.
FAD Award

Award-Winner / Winner. Category: Architecture

Banco Urquijo Housing Complex
French Institute of Barcelona

José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés

It is a clear example of Coderch's conceptions of urban architecture, this time applied to a scholar and cultural building. The plot is occupied in its entirety by two underground floors and a ground floor, while the remaining eight floors form a very clear prism, set back from the street and separated from neighbouring buildings. The image of this prism from the different points of view of the street means that the design of the building has focused mainly on the skin of the façade. The reinforced concrete pillars are absorbed into the thickness of the skin, and the openings, very slender and located on the outside, accentuate the smooth appearance of the ceramic coating and offer a light and nuanced light inside. The result is a large, smooth volume that clearly assumes its urban role and is shown as a fragment of a city that cares, above all, about its position and the open spaces it generates.
FAD Award

Shortlisted. Category: Architecture

French Institute of Barcelona