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COAC FAÇADE RENOVATION
cultural, public
open competition
< 1 M€
barcelona, spain
2014
competition proposal











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ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR (Karl Marx)A clear and primordial gesture, to elevate the perimeter marked by the mural of the front of Picasso up to 16 meters by above, to the level of the neighboring buildings (which is also the level of the first proposal of Xavier Busquets for the competition), to delimit an interior space, a square within a garden inside presided over by the new facade of the tower. The intention is clear and direct: to demonstrate the ability of architecture to transform the space through a decisive and decided gesture. The unused roof of the auditorium now becomes a public square, accessible from the interior of the tower and also from Plaça Nova, through a small staircase that sits in the middle of the square and draws attention to a space which is veiled externally through the microperforated metal plates. A small off-centered door aligned with the axis separating the garden introduces visitors into a new space, where the solid, whether beliefs, dogmas, materialities or previous assumptions, dissolves in the air of the created space itself, on a unusual scale, both of the space itself, and of the materiality / immateriality with which it is solved.
The proposal proposes spatiality, materiality, and use. For this reason, the choice of Marx's phrase as a motto, with all its significance (special mention of the one developed by Marshall Berman in the book of the same title), is not casual, but causal.
(extract from the competition memory)