Glòries Housing

Masterplan for an Eixample block and collective housing building facing Glòries Square

Barcelona, Spain

A gradient of thresholds between public and private

The proposal is structured through a sequence of thresholds that generates a gradient between the public and the domestic, maximizing the spatial amplitude and promoting meetings and dialogue between the neighbours, as well as between the teams of architects who will carry out the different buildings of the block.

Urban thresholds

Threshold # 1: Impluvium Patio. The volumes are organized around a large landscaped collective courtyard, as transition with the street. The accesses to the vertical communication cores are made through the courtyard.
Threshold # 2: Joints of light and articulation. The articulation between the volumes (plots) is solved by large gaps or joints that contain the vertical circulation cores.
Threshold # 3: Access walkways. They act as elevated streets that can be expanded in front of each dwelling. They are wide enough for a comfortable passage, and for stopping to talk.
Threshold # 4: Terraced roof garden. The roof is organized by an uninterrupted succession of terraces with a ground cover and the size of allotment gardens, directly reachable from the access walkways. The collective roof garden becomes a threshold with the landscape: the rooftops of the Eixample, the sky, the mountains and the sea.

Domestic thresholds

Threshold # 5: Veranda/Conservatory. A transition space between the access walkway and the dwellings, it can be both join the dwelling or to the walkway, forming a veranda or a conservatory.
Threshold #6: Centripetal Space. Within each dwelling of Plot A, the central space of the dwelling acts as a filter between the private and the intimate, and any room that surrounds it can be aggregated to it.
Threshold # 7: Terrace to Glòries Square. In Plot A, each dwelling opens generously to the Glòries Square, through a large terrace.

Project name

Glòries Housing

Location

Glòries Square, Barcelona, Spain

Client

Barcelona City Council

Year

2017

Status

Competition

Program

Masterplan and social housing building

Gross built area: 30.000m2

Author

Eduard Balcells Architecture+Urbanism+Landscape

Ignasi Rius, architect

Collaborators

Honorata Grzesikowska, urban designer