The planning responded to a city model radically different from that of a Mediterranean city and the project found no loophole to change its purposes.
The plan had set a buildability of 32,940 m2 to be divided between three buildings perfectly defined in their maximum occupations, their required heights and their position on the floor. The project focused on optimising habitability in such a rigid and untouchable framework.
In the two towers, the maximum allowable use was taken advantage of because it facilitated the organisation of different sizes and distributions of the houses and the compositional obsession with slenderness was clearly renounced as if it were an indisputable value. Both reached the mandatory maximum height and the excess buildability that would have resulted if all the plants had been equal to the casualties was reduced and adjusted by extractions to the overall volume. Extractions that increased as they gained height and were carried out in areas facing north, in areas without sea views or on the nearest edges between buildings.
In the towers and at each core of stairs and elevators a series of bands were defined that completely wrapped them in the large tower and only on three of its faces in the small one. Of these bands the nearest was the access corridor to the houses. The next one, 50 cm thick, was occupied by pillars and installations. In the widest band, 8 m thick, the houses were distributed without any fixed vertical element and with total freedom to decide sizes and distributions. It was followed by another 50 cm occupied again by installations, pillars and glazed enclosures from floor to ceiling that separated it from the terraces run by 3m of cantilever. Due to its size and the protection from the sun, wind, vacuum and other people's eyes, which were provided by sliding shutters with adjustable aluminum slats, they became another room in the house, a new element of communication between all its pieces, in a generous intermediate space between interior and exterior of a very Mediterranean tradition. And all this is thanks to sensible ordinances that did not penalise terraces with loss of buildability.
In those faces that arose from the extractions carried out in the general volume and in which terraces could not be built, the same compositional elements were used as in the rest of the façades. Cantilevers, railings and shutters were also present, although with other measures and relationships so that the building did not have a front and a back.
The façades of the lower building were treated with the same resources as those of the towers, seeking to confuse and perceive the three buildings as overlapping and perceived as a unique, formless and changing shape.
The building is located on a remaining plot of land in the Diagonal Mar park, which is large and irregular in shape, subject to very strict urban conditions and which did not offer much room for maneuver. Clotet and Paricio decide to dispense with any compositional approach and choose to conform faithfully to the urban guidelines by means of volumes that, on the façade, are treated with the repetition of the same piece. This repetitive element consists of a piece of aluminum and a panel, in the case of the opaque facings located in front of the pillars. The assembly is mounted on pre-frames formed by a 120 x 40 mm galvanised tube framework, which is anchored to the slabs by means of wicks. The shutters are made of adjustable profiled aluminum sheets, mounted on extruded aluminum frames that run through a double guide of the same material. Clotet and Paricio shift the interest in composition to systematic construction detail and create an organism that will only acquire scale and dimensions through the activity of users.
