AR-01
ARCHITECTURE
01_SBG
W/ ESTUDIO CASI
The municipality where the project is located, Sant Bartomeu del Grau (Vic), has been affected by the occupation and destruction of its context by a local chief whose factory occupies, since the 60s, the village's territory up to 90% of the urban land.
Our project focuses on the reuse of the waste left by the factory after its closure in 2003. In particular, we are interested in the workers' housing block, due to its precarious and abandoned state. Only 8 of the initial 70 residents still live there, in precarious conditions, both in terms of comfort and in legal terms.
The decontextualization that a collective housing building implies for the morphology of a rural municipality, together with the abandonment of the institutions and the lack of response to the problems of the former factory workers, make this architecture a global challenge.
The block is an urban, political, and social problem.
Our project, betting on the reuse and non-creation of architecture, understands the waste from an angle of logical and spatial use. That is to say, from the point of view of the use of space that has already been created. We believe, then in the possibility to propose a quality architecture without the need to destroy or create: transforming the existing. Thus, the project becomes an opportunity to return to the municipality part of the debt that its own creation has caused.
New typologies and new users, a space of opportunity for uses linked to the town and a clear intention of occupation by the collective (space).