vallirana 47. refurbishment of a housing building

Vallirana 47 is a building enclosed with the edifices on both sides, built in 1923, quite anonymous and discreet. Its value doesn´t lie within any singular identity, but in the sense of continuity of an epoch. It had a conventional distribution of corridor and small rooms, slightly altered, and interiors with the hydraulic mosaic floors, plaster mouldings on some of the ceilings, tall and narrow painted wooden doors and windows, booklet blinds, etc ... In some of the houses there were still original elements that nowadays are hard to find.
The work consists of the interior reformation of 5 of the 6 apartments that are in the building, and the common spaces. 4 apartments with a similar presentation in the main and first floors, and an apartment on the ground floor that differs from the rest in distribution and spatiality. Due to its higher interior height, the spaces are more vertical and attics appear as a spatial extension in all of the rooms.

Aroused by the idea of intervention of Pontejos (conservation and preservation), we took a step further in the strategies of use and transformation of an existing assays in previous works, taking the action to a level of assimilation between the new and the old to which we have never had arrived before. In the project we work with the identity of the building in a way that is both continued and disruptive, with a respectful and at the same time sportive attitude.

The new spatial arrangement is superimposed on the existing one in the expressive way, through friction and displacement. Pavements and ceilings incorporate an order and hierarchy of the original spaces, while the partitions collect, at the same time, part of this memory and transform it.

The new material augmentation hybridizes with the pre-existing detail and ornament. Many materials and elements of the building were recycled, which maintain environmental continuity. Everything that was re-added, links with this continuity from the most tactile aspects to the most abstract ones: glazed tiles, application of graphic patterns extracted from the building's bars, wall papers, etc ... In this sensory approach, there was also incorporated the stratification of qualities that characterized the residential buildings of that time, specifically in the detail of some coatings and elements.

In brief, we build a density of layers of perception and information in the interiors, which provides complexity and vibration. Vibration with meaning for those who want to interpret it, which at the same time generates visual comfort, deliberately away from the smooth and anonymous surfaces. In this wat the future tenants will feel at home from the first day.