Social Housing for Youth, Encuny 7

Barcelona, Spain

Photo © MSA+A

Photo © Franc Jobar

Photo © MSA+A

Architects: MSA+A

Location: Barcelona, Spain
Year: 2011

This public housing building for young people is located in the Zona Franca neighbourhood of Barcelona in a former industrial block transformed into a service district, “District 38 Barcelona. Business Area”

A 12- story, L-shaped building is proposed, arranged around two perpendicular corridors which have natural light and views at each end. These circulation spaces give access to the houses and facilitate inspection to all services and facilities externally. The stair and lift core is located at the junction of the two corridors, and occupies the only floor space that has no façade. The fold of the building forms a courtyard facing south.

Encuny 7 is a compact building, eliminating some of the flats on the corners of the upper floors, so that there is a progressive reduction in the volume which clips the edges and helps create a more slender and complex shape. This unique form is visible from a distance and the building itself has many views of Calle Encuny, Zona Franca and the Ronda Litoral as well as many views of the neighbouring mountain of Montjuïc. The roofed areas at different heights that are a result of the reduction in the building volume are turned into community terraces.

The proposed façades are tense, formed by three independent sheets and dry built with a ventilated façade technology. It has a single type carpentry that is structured based on a strict modular mesh of solid and hollow. To accentuate the apparent slenderness of the building three compositions are applied: windows are grouped vertically every two floors, staggered in height and irregularly eliminated in alternating columns in the upper section of the façade.