The building of the Tibidabo Funicular is a building from 1888 designed as a train station from the lower part of the mountain, in this case the funicular train that gives access to the Tibidabo mountain, and not only to the amusement park; in the past it also gave access to the residents of the mountain. The building has the architectural characteristics of a typical train station. It is a building-lobby on the ground floor of access, with housing on its upper level for the person in charge of maintaining the railway line. Attached to this volume is the gable roof that covers the train and the access platforms to it, as if it were "the train house". Obviously, the building is in a sloping position, given the characteristics of the funicular. The building had been modified over the years, adding small auxiliary constructions, and even painted its façades like advertising posters. These posters gave the building a unique commercial character. The proposal says that this lobby building is what comes before the reality that the public will find in the park, a world of fantasy.
This intervention consists of cleaning the building of the added constructions, and freeing both the interior and exterior of unnecessary constructions. The building that covers the platform and the train is dismantled and rebuilt like the previous one, in order to waterproof this whole space, preserving the wooden structures, trusses, and part of the ceramics of the polychrome roof. Externally, all the existing cladding is cleaned and the station is repainted. The commercial paintings that had been done on the walls of the building could not be recovered for budgetary reasons and were repainted with blue lines, on a protective base of these drawings, so that at any time they can be made visible again.
The interior space was restored to its initial state, leaving the ceramic ceilings with metal beams exposed. The wrought iron pillars were also recovered, as was the pavement.
The lobby space is inhabited with white sheets that will serve as a support for the projections of images of the activity that takes place in the park. While waiting for the train, the public will be able to enjoy the projections on these sheets, built with plasterboard, which allow the existing building to breathe. It is a fragile occupation of space, as if it were a ghost. The soil is preserved, and coloured pieces are incorporated simulating flowers on the ground. These ghosts, the white sheets, are built with wooden slats when these surfaces incorporate closed spaces such as the ticket office or the pergola that covers the arrival platform.
The small washroom, lined on the walls and ceiling with curved panels of perfectly reflective stainless steel, reinterprets a room of magical warping mirrors. The windows are recovered and protected with sheet metal, like a skin of fish scales, fragmenting in its opening movement, inviting the public to enter, as if this new building were another attraction of the park. Natural light filters gently through these metallic curtains.
The intervention also included the painting of the two old trains in the manner of two large colourful caterpillars that move slowly up and down the forest, and the sheet metal portal that closes the trains at night and that in the backlight is a metal forest which gets confused with the real forest that surrounds it.
