240 Dwellings in La Maquinista
credits
Location: Carrer Lima. Barcelona
Client: Immobiliaria Colonial S.A.
Year of the project: 1999
Construction: 2003
Area: 30.000m2
location
description
The world of large scale, private, initiative real estate was at the time a field waiting to be explored when it came to planning and architectural projection, and this entailed volume-based rearrangement using abstract parameters provided during planning. This is not such a simple, harmless action as it may seem because it includes the DNA which would then be used in order to develop open spaces, circulation, changing categories, small amenities, trees, lending urban meaning to the complex and allowing it to fit in the city fabric and bridging the gap between individual and collective. One early work we prepared in this context was a city block at La Maquinista belonging to a major complex in Sant Andreu that had been planned by Joan Busquets (1999). The buildability and density were high and on top of it all the real estate client wanted a host of unexplainable styles, as well as bare brick construction (an anachronistic system in terms of energy savings). The process gave rise to a controlled complex with interesting areas for socialisation, private terraces protected using our familiar corrugated sheets with helical communal staircases, all made possible thanks to the technical skills and good attitude of the site manager.
