Description
Located in a suburb of Barcelona, the project is a complex vertical conglomerate of 16 aggregated towers laid out in a grid around six courtyards. Tower pairs flanking the courtyards are not simply vertical, but widen alternately at their center or at their tops and bottoms. The pairs open toward the center around the four larger courtyards to form a “window to the city,” the gap narrowing again at the top. In the central axis, they widen at the base to form a “city gate” connecting the open and linked courtyards with the surrounding neighborhood.
Bundled together in the central courtyards, the elevators form a junction for the residential community. Starting at each stop, a horizontal circulation network connects two levels and branches off around multiple courtyards, forming a space of chance encounters as it leads to the individual apartment entrances.
The floor plans are based on 30 m² modules, which can be combined horizontally or vertically to form apartments with different sizes and various configurations. The spatial configuration of each unit begins with a seemingly schematically zoned floor plan: bathrooms and kitchens are placed along the dividing wall between apartments, with the living spaces lined up on the opposite facade wall. A double-sided closet wall in between acts more like an interface than a boundary. The separation dissipates again and again. For instance, the bathtub opens up to the living room while one side of the dining table is in the kitchen and the other in the living room. The vision of living – as illustrated in the perspective sketches – focuses completely on a horizontal plane; to one side of the closet wall, a living landscape of seating and sleeping accommodations is sunk into the floor, devoid of any other furniture.
Drawings
Floor plan diagrams, scale 1:500
Site plan of both built and unbuilt project phases
Aerial view of both the built and unbuilt project phases and surroundings
Entire floor plans: ground floor, 5th floor, 10th floor and 16th floor (from bottom to top)
13th floor showing central vertical access core and circulation network
Longitudinal section AA through the complex high-rise cluster
Longitudinal section BB through the complex high-rise cluster
Longitudinal section CC through the complex high-rise cluster
1 module: studio apartment, scale 1:200
2 modules: 2-room apartment, scale 1:200
2 modules: 2-room duplex apartment, scale 1:200
3 modules: 4-room duplex apartment, scale 1:200
4 modules: 5-room duplex apartment, scale 1:200
Photos
Exterior view
Interior view of apartment
Originally published in: Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider with Eric Zapel (eds.), Floor Plan Manual Housing, fifth revised and expanded edition, Birkhäuser, 2018.