República Argentina dwellings in Barcelona
Multi-family residential building between party walls in the Sant Gervasi neighbourhood.
Can Bruguera housing block in Castellar del Vallès was designed as a development of small-format rental apartments for young people. The typology of the building, a freestanding 10-storey block, was stipulated by local town planning.
Our proposal set out to rationalize the organization of the building by turning the apartments to face east and west, situating the main entrance in the north and clothes lines facing south. Given the limited space in this typology and the built volume of the block, this layout created larger communal and distribution spaces than is usual in this type of development.
This generated a system of vertical communications that give the building a community identity rarely possible in social housing, with a system of double-height spaces that project a unitary image.
The treatment of the finishes on the stairs and in the foyers, characterized by beech wood and overhead lighting, were key in this respect. The apartments group kitchens and bathrooms together to enable inspection from the building’s communal areas. The living room and bedroom are separated by a sliding door to create one large space as required, and share a window and terrace, creating a single opening in the façade.
The terraces are separated by prefabricated concrete screens on their north sides to provide privacy and protection from the wind. The west and south faces of the block are built of facing bricks, which are laid to create a lattice screen that ensures ventilation of the washing lines. The north face comprises prefabricated concrete panels that continue the screens on the terraces.