Multifunctional building "Fondo"

Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Spain

Photo © Simón García

Drawing © Picharchitects

Arquitectos: picharchitects

Localização: Carrer de Mossèn Jacin Verdaguer, 131, 08922 Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Spain
Ano: 2014

The building is located in a dense urban area with a poor road infrastructure and practically no open spaces. The old market was demolished, as its structure was completely obsolete. The new Multifunctional Building has the aim of re-using the place in a more intensive way.

The new building "Fondo" is a multifunctional construction which pretends to respond to the needs and requirements of the dense city, while concentrating in only one volume with different functions that are normally scattered throughout the city and linked to the ground floor.

The architecture aims to multiply the "zero level", generating in each level the qualities of a new floor in vertical development, linking it to the hilly topography of the neighbourhood, acting as activator of the urban flow.

The interior project retracts the different existent levels between the streets of its immediate environment, allowing, throughout the various connections between uses and spaces, an internal route which can be used as part of the public space, converting the building into equipment, square and street.

Functionally, the building provides equipment to a neighbourhood with a mainly immigrant population. The ground floor at the level of the promenade is home to the market. On the ground 1 from the promenade and ground floor from the back street, is located the supermarket. A large ramp, like a deployed street, gives access to the library and the nursery which has its garden on the roof of the supermarket.

The entire building has been designed to integrate bioclimatic systems to reduce air conditioning demands.