SARDENYA 356 Apartments / Atienza Maure Arquitectos

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Context.The project is the construction of a building between party walls of 12 houses inBarcelona. It is located on a narrow plot between Còrsega and Sardenya streets, adjacent to the corner but without access to the block patio. This almost residual condition in the Eixample fabric led us to propose a façade that was as transparent as possible, connecting the houses as much as possible with the Mediterranean climate of Barcelona but at the same time protecting them from the sun and from a street with a lot of motorized traffic.A vernacular climatic device.This Mediterranean façade protection system using wooden shutters manages to bring coolness in Barcelona’s hot summers and a large amount of light and a greenhouse effect in its mild winters, in a friendly, simple, and highly effective way.Materiality.The project explores the potential of these nineteenth-century façades of the Eixample block patios, with glazed galleries protected by simple wooden roller shutters and which, when opened, form continuous balconies along the entire façade. We have adopted this Mediterranean shading system with a bespoke design of motorized standard pine shutters mounted on folding aluminum carpentry. By using commercial wood blinds we ensure that they can be easily and inexpensively repaired or replaced.Our clearest references at first were the facades with lattice systems and brise soleil from some local projects by architects such as Mitjans, Coderch, or Bofill, but we were immediately fascinated by the simplicity of the rear facades of the Eixample, with their apparent non-design, practicality and beauty.The aluminum windows here also go from floor to ceiling to achieve that feeling of maximum openness in the summer and winter gardens, with polished concrete floors and exposed concrete slab ceilings. The ground floor has two pass-through duplexes with a rear garden, protected from the street by sliding pine lattices. The upper body can be fully opened to achieve privacy and an overhead light effect that we believe adds great value to homes that normally have poor living conditions.