"Street Cleaning Services Facilities" and "Primavera District Gardens": a building under a green space.
The two-hectare land where the two facilities were built is located between the residential fabric of the "Poble Sec" neighbourhood and the northern slope of Montjuïc Park and had a very rough topography and a steep gradient. Much of the plot, owned by the municipality, was covered by dilapidated buildings hidden by spontaneous vegetation.
Starting from the existing topography and the platform created by the roof of the transfer centre, "Parks and Gardens" designed a new green area, with infrastructure and urban garden facilities in harmony with the façade of the new building, guaranteeing at the same time the continuity with the rest of the green space since one of the most important challenges was solving the connection for pedestrians.
The development of this route required a major adaptation of the topography with a considerable earth movement, generating a system of terraces and slopes, which are supported with the help of several gabion walls. The result is practically vertical gardens, oriented towards the houses located in the lower streets, which form a new green curtain in the neighbourhood. These gardens act as a transition between the "Poble Sec" neighbourhood and the leafiest and wildest green of the Montjuïc mountain.
On the terrace located in the lower area of the park, on the roof of the "Street Cleaning Services Facilities", there is a playground for children. The "Street Cleaning Services Facilities”, a 4,262m2 building under the park that is integrated into the territory, is developed on two floors and has a 90-metres-long façade. It was the implementation of an urban improvement plan that allowed this new equipment to be installed on the ground, intended for the transfer centre of road cleaning waste from "Poble Sec" and "Ciutat Vella".
The commission for the building posed a complex program of requirements: a specific gauge, the imperative not to incorporate zenithal lighting, and a single façade to the north that had to solve the lighting and ventilation needs of a very diverse interior program (staff and truck access, offices, truck area, classrooms, changing rooms, ET, facilities...). A double skin system with prefabricated concrete perforated panels was sought, able to adapt to all the requirements of the façade: a simple system for a complex program. With this system and the placement of accesses for trucks and personnel at the ends of the building, we have been able to transform a dark and hostile place into a street illuminated at night and an image not so much of a building but of a garden wall, by means of a geometric game of lights and shadows.
The building itself is a powerful structure that supports the loads of the park and that inside houses the changing rooms and services of the workers, an information centre for residents, the offices of the centre and spaces for the maintenance and washing of vehicles. It also incorporates three watertight containers for the compaction of garbage, which are removed every day, and is equipped with an innovative filtering system for suspended solids. The phreatic water used in the building, both to fill the tankers and for cleaning, comes from the Liceu Theatre catchment well.
The new gardens are enjoyed by both local people and pedestrians coming and going from Montjuïc Park. The old sidewalks, dirty and broken, have been transformed into pleasant paths. The apple tree, which used to impress us with its wild and impenetrable state, has been transformed into a new and well-used green space that has given rise to a new "garden-wall-façade" that gives livelihood to the neighbourhood.
