El bloc tanca el perímetre d’una illa de cases poc homogènia d’edificació, en una àrea de nou creixement on manquen les jerarquies d’escala entre els espais públics i els privats. El projecte es proposa crear uns espais intermedis que facin de gradació entre els habitatges, el carrer i la plaça pública del centre de l’illa. Amb el nou edifici es dissenyen els accessos a aquesta plaça per mitjà d’un plegament de la façana als dos extrems i a la part central. Els habitatges, tots orientats al sud, tenen l’entrada pel pati central, de manera que aquest pati esdevé un espai comú per als veïns de totes dues escales.

The Yute's project is the extension of an existing textile warehouse, located in an industrial area near Barcelona, Sant Just Desvern. It is located next to the Walden 7 housing complex, which has inspired the design process due to its scale, strength and colour. The two young clients had bought an old office building with some warehouse space next to it. After a few years of using it, they needed more warehouse space and thought of expanding it, since the regulations for that plot allowed double the occupancy of the existing building. The main problem with the extension was that it could only be done in height, as the sides were already compromised by fire regulations. The original building didn't have much quality from an architectural point of view, but both the clients and us thought from the beginning that it was better to keep as much as possible of what existed, and grow from what existed, rather than demolish everything and start a new building. The project extends the entirety of the existing building above and wraps it in coloured metallic skins that allude to the coloured fabrics that the company manufactures and sells. The decisive factors when using corrugated steel were lightness and construction time. Later, we thought about its relationship with the textile pieces, the similar dimension of both elements: the sizes of the metal pieces were similar to the length of the textile coils. There is also the fact that both need a support structure, which can be raised like the end of a garment (the awnings on the front façade) which could be turned and show the seams (the west façade through which the customers enter). The effect of this empty construction in the centre is ultimately affected by its perimeter, by its limits, and this follows the same logic as the design of a dress, of a skirt: enveloping a body that is not there, reshaping its edges...

The project eliminates an old street that passed in front of the housing building and brings all the public space against it. The relationship between the hall and the square becomes very direct, in continuity – they are an extension of the halls of the houses and the bars, which have their terraces next to the games. To reinforce this open-air lobby, a large climbing pergola traces the profile of the building at some distance. It acts as a cushion that absorbs the abrupt change of scale between the vertical and horizontal plane of the square: it turns the corner and heads towards the Fòrum. Inside this open hall there is a kiosk, which attracts attention due to its shape and colours. Its striped wrapper reveals its contents: ice cream and candies, concentrating much of the energy of this place. Beyond the pergola, a red path connects with a bridge that crosses over the Gran Via to the other side of this avenue, where the children go to school every day. On the way back, in the afternoon, they cross the bridge and see the candy stand in the distance. They still don't know if it's open or not since the door hides, turning towards the building and turning its back on them. The red crossing in the middle of the square acts as a shortcut. The square is no longer just a square, but rather a street with things passing on one side and the other. It connects the other side of the Gran Via with the La Mina neighbourhood, and beyond the new area of the Fòrum and the sea.

A skylight of 3 floors. The new house is an extension of an old popular house in an industrial district of Barcelona. The existing house, between partitions, was located on a very narrow and elongated plot, and had two floors in height and a rear courtyard that belonged to a larger structure of interior courtyards on the block. Currently, the regulations in this area of the city allow one more floor to go up, that is, up to three floors, and to extend the house in depth by up to five more metres. The main problem in extending a house so narrow in depth and height is to illuminate the central part, and to get the sunlight to penetrate to the ground floor level. Thus, the decision was to transform the main staircase into a skylight three stories high, like a huge lamp that brings light throughout the house to the ground floor, where the living room is. This staircase is the place where family members meet, the public space of the house. When entering this space, a change of scale is experienced: long diagonal views open up, up to 10 metres long. A large volume of air has been introduced into a plot that seemed unable to contain it. Each room in the house participates in the light and cross visions through this space. The main level of the house appears to be level 3, the second floor, where the light is located. Thanks to a small patio, the house begins to be transparent on this level, where everything mixes: plants, light, rain, air, wood, fabrics, strollers... The staircase crosses the house by crossing the natural light that comes from above. It seems as if space is flowing upwards faster than itself… There is an almost theatrical way of moving through the staircase, appearing and disappearing… as soon as the staircase touches the ground floor it becomes a kind of secret place. Whoever uses it surprisingly disappears and reappears under the arch. Domestic activity The family that commissioned the house, its future occupants, envisioned a very intense way of living, filling the interiors with everyday activities. Thus, the daily activities have been represented in every space, in every piece of furniture... The family fills all the rooms with their presence. The couple with their two children followed the design process very closely, constantly commenting on how the house would help organise daily activities: Dolors would take care of the daily tasks of the house; the washing machine would be near the bathroom, in the parents' area; the food would be stored in the pantry under the fireplace; the kitchen, close to the garden, enjoying the sights and smells of the plants and the garden planted there; the garden would have a place to organise barbecues and to cook bread and pizzas with an earthen oven; bathing, eating, sleeping... While the boys would take responsibility for cleaning the upper floor. The meetings in our studio were getting longer and more intense, their comments never alluded to a special atmosphere or the use of a particular material, but rather intense conversations about household chores, which tend to be cyclical and exhausting, but which they faced with the illusion of making the house an aid to the list of tasks. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and we ended up drawing all these commissions, driven by their positive attitude. Organisation of the house The two new façades, the front and the back, contain the rooms for the various members of the family: bedrooms, studies, a kitchen connected to the back yard... The original staircase, located in the middle of the house, divides each floor into two areas, the one facing the street and the one facing the back yard. The central area is where everything matches: smoke rising, light and water going down, people rising and descending. The outer areas Rear garden The relationship between the house and its yard is clear and open. The patio is an extension of the interior of the house, a place to carry out daily outdoor activities. We could say that the social part of the house is concentrated towards the back, away from the street, in the quieter area related to the interior of the block. At the far end of the garden there is a shed to store garden tools, and a barbecue with a floor oven for cooking bread and pizzas. The rear façade functions somewhat like a tower, with folds that make the block less compact, more fragmented, with several windows acting as individuals representing the occupants of the various rooms. Upper terrace The original house had a gable roof, without the possibility of outdoor activities. Directly related to the children's area, this upper floor is a new room open to the sky, quiet and solitary during the day, and at the same time a place to organise social activities in the summer nights.

The 111 Building in Barcelona investigates and experiments with the idea of promoting communication, relationships and familiarity between neighbours, so that the neighbourhood acts as the first structure within society, reversing the tendency towards isolation and individuality. The centre of the project is a large void, occupied by three trees and a fountain, surrounded by balconies and terraces, in the manner of a large theatre the seating area of which is surrounded by boxes and galleries that open onto it. Here, the neighbours come out to life on their balconies and stick their heads out to socialise or look at the landscape through a huge opening that frames Torrebonica Park. This communal yard is a platform for social relations, where people from very different origins and cultures communicate and make friends: the great void unites them. This empty centre is reached through an excavation of the large massif that is the building towards the outside. The path from the street to the interior of the houses, crossing this large courtyard, is modulated in a sequence of stairs and a progressive change from the most open and public area to the most intimate and private area of home. The closures are blurred and unfolded in overlapping elements to unite one end with the other, working to graduate the relationship between what is public and what is private. From one end to the other, from the bedroom to the street, the route is varied and always different. The relationship between family members is mixed with the relationship with the neighbours in the yard, so that it becomes an extension of the family core, where friends and acquaintances accompany one another in their daily lives in a second level of privacy. The tranquility with which mothers let their children go to play in the yard, where everyday shopping can be entrusted to others, where the door of the house opens to invite you to walk in naturally, confirms that architecture can help provide a space of trust, and generate a fragment of the city that invites the culture of sociability.

To visit the abandoned building of the former Pau i Justícia Cooperative to do the contest meant entering a time tunnel, which took us to the moment when it was used as a meeting place, a small theatre, a social room and for parties. It still retained much of the decoration on walls, ceilings and floors, which helped us understand the different occupations that the building had had: hydraulic mosaic floors, wooden carpentry with stained glass, cornices and rose windows in the rooms... they all define large spaces, unusual for Barcelona if we weren’t in an area of the city with an industrial past. The state of physical decay in which we found this building interested us, but not because we wanted to return it to its original state; instead, we intended to bring this ruin forward, and make it participate, with its unfinished character and overlapping styles and eras, in a new reality that can continue to be updated on it. Thus, the project recovers a building present in the collective memory of this neighbourhood, maintaining its spirit so that it is naturally reincorporated into its cultural dynamics and where the neighbours, many of them former cooperative members, are recognised in it. Therefore, when we started working, we made an inventory of everything that could be recovered from the building and which we relocated in different places and in a different way to where they were originally located. These elements - floors, windows, doors, wooden stairs, moldings and rose windows - return to the building in an operation of recovery, adaptation and re-use.