The journey of this project has been complex and strange, a true reflection of the convulsive times in which it has been developed. The original project, the result of a competition called by the Barcelona City Council, was drafted in 2019 but the economic crisis forced its pause. While it was not possible to undertake the rehabilitation, it was decided to make small occasional investments to repair the roof and close the windows with provisional plastic to stop the deterioration of a factory that, due to its curious morphology of a central nave and two lateral naves and due to its strategic position on the so-called Pere IV axis, it deserved to be preserved.
The project has been adapting with a realistic and positive attitude to the economic reality in which it has had to live, and to chain those small provisional interventions that gradually build the final project. A project that is no longer the original, thought of in one go, but that in its own precariousness and disorder builds a certain way of rethinking this type of action, very contemporary.
Halfway through, once the original architecture has been consolidated and suitably protected, it is decided to open it to the public with a temporary exhibition, which far from being ephemeral, strives to gradually build the facility.
Some fundamental ideas are still preserved from the original project. The nave, which was part of an old factory built in 1920, contained some fascinating interior brick textures, probably more interesting than some of its exterior façades, which, having historically had other volumes attached to them, lacked interest.
From the beginning, the project proposed not only to recover, but also to highlight those textures of the past, and to do so, it tried to centrifuge everything that could damage them. A ring-shaped, searchable underground gallery allows for all the installations that are necessary both now and in the future, and any element that is necessary for the proper functioning of the museum is attached to the outside of the nave: the elevator, which in its verticality reminisces the chimney that the factory never had, linear evacuation stairs, temporary bathrooms and even a large porch that
opens to the park without modifying the original architecture.
There is also a certain idea of materiality already raised in the competition phase which tries to solve all the pieces with a single material: the galvanized iron sheet. In an effort to relate the iron -the protagonist of the time in which it was built the building- with today, giving the material a new, somewhat surprising appearance.
One more phase is currently being worked on, which will not be the last, and which builds a staircase to access the loft, an elevator and the porch. Each of these pieces is resolved from belonging to a set but attending to a certain design independence that accumulates objects in the intervention.
Once the old warehouse had been properly consolidated and protected, while the works to build the new MUHBA headquarters were not resumed, it was decided to open the site to show it to the public. To do so, temporary bathrooms were built and an exhibition was prepared that should be a sample of what will be seen in the future.
The project solves the intervention with a single gesture and proposes a large hanging lamp in the middle of the space, drawing a ring of light that separates the outer perimeter, dedicated to housing an exhibition on the city of Barcelona, from the interior space intended to host events and presentations.
The large lamp is a large element on the scale of the building that enhances the richness of the interior textures and the basilica section of the enclosure.