The Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes studio began working on the plan for the Pasaje Mas de Roda in Poblenou in Barcelona in 2003.
The action refers to the area of an old factory built in 1916, which was part of the wellknown "Companyia d'Indústries Agrícoles S.A." by Josep Suñol and Jaume Carner, a place popularly known as “Pasaje del Azúcar”, -or Sugar Passage-. In accordance with the plan drawn up in 2003, which included the whole of the old factory on both sides of the road, in 2008 the former industrial buildings on the north side, with a constructed area of 4,500 m2 , were converted into 29 unconventional dwellings or lofts.
Once the spaces of the former factory were rehabilitated to plan the necessary houses and basements, another 4,500 m2 planned above ground level remained unbuilt on the south side of the Passage. These were the subject of the new-built office project (2019), carried out for a new developer, for which the original plan was reviewed and optimised, and the original allocated area was extended.
Thanks to the planning already presented since 2003, it has been possible to speed up the administrative processes, which is why the architectural firm has managed to complete the project in 18 months, by providing a very effective and competitive strategy for investment.
The office project continues the drawing of the former volumes on the other side of the Mas de Roda, so that the whole complex defines a coherent urban ecosystem with its streets and buildings that can be accessed from Calle Ramon Turró on the north side and from two points, located in front of the other, on the Pasaje Mas de Roda.
Instead of thinking of a classic building of offices grouped in a single volume, this project is based on a model similar to that of a city, as a kind of more porous avenue, for which a variety of volumes of different heights and levels have been built. The highest volume has flat roofs used as terraces, while the lower constructions are characterised by a gabled roof. This distribution allows for open and closed spaces, public or semi-public and private, to coexist flexibly like a small city within the city. With a more abstract architectural language, and without resorting to literal mimicry, the new offices create continuity with the old rehabilitated buildings in terms of mass, materiality, shape and the repeated arrangement of the windows across the new façades.
On the ground floor of the new buildings, the use of anthracite-coloured exposed brick adds greater precision to the contact between the building and the street and more effectively groups together the numerous incidents that occur on this level. This relationship with the outside is also contemplated in the floors, with a material that extends inside the volumes, suggesting continuity. This distribution and materiality allow the old part of the factory to be rehabilitated for housing and the newly built office part to harmoniously conserve the industrial identity of the Poblenou district.
The Pasaje Mas de Roda is thus an urban complex that combines old and new, homes and offices, buildings, streets, alleys and squares, forming a complex urban ecosystem that is highly representative of what Poblenou’s 22@ is in Barcelona. The building obtained the first LEED Platinum rating in all of Catalonia in version 4.0 Building Design and Construction.
THE SURROUNDINGS
The project is located in Barcelona's 22@ district, an area of two hundred hectares of industrial land in the historic Poblenou manufacturing district, in Barcelona, which is planned for transformation into an innovative district that offers modern spaces for the strategic concentration of knowledge-intensive activities. This initiative is also an urban rehabilitation project and a new city model that responds to the challenges posed by the knowledge society. It is the most important urban transformation project of recent years in Barcelona and one of the most ambitious of its kind in Europe, with high real estate potential and public investment of 180 million euro in the infrastructure plan.
PRINCIPLES OF THE PROJECT
It seems that never before had it been so necessary to reflect on the relationship we establish with the places we inhabit. Climate crisis, phenomena of great social transformation, real estate bubbles; great speculative disasters that have altered the landscape and the oro-hydrographic ecosystem are just some of the signs that architecture is increasingly becoming an obligatory field of experimentation for new more sustainable policies.
These considerations are the basis of three fundamental principles that characterise the approach of this project and of the Garcés de Seta Bonet studio. The first, attention to the place. As Jordi Garcés says, “the transformation of the place and its surroundings produced by architectural intervention becomes a precious opportunity to reread, adapt and highlight the wealth of the context.”
The second, the dialogue between old and new. In the case of these offices, Daria de Seta points out that “the project proposes solutions that speak the language of the current inhabitants of the space. The operation has been in a historic place, but it has been done in a contemporary key.”
And the third, to ask yourself what is really necessary. In the words of Anna Bonet, the studio believes that “achieving the greatest expressive and conceptual impact is essential to understand what is strictly necessary, not only in terms of impact and cost reduction, but above all in terms of rigour and precision.”
Team:
Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes - Jordi Garcés, Daria de Seta, Anna Bonet
