This residential building in Barcelona is highlighted on account of the overall strategy that has been used to solve this particular structural system. It is one of the first examples of the work of this team of architects that shows a design approach based on the optimisation of prefabricated elements according to a well organised arrangement of the floor plan.
There are lots of things to say of each of the buildings we publish in this website. However, from the beginning we decided to focus just in one aspect or curiosity for each of them.
This façade's goal is not to create a traditional static architectural image for the city, but to design a technological solution that responds to the inhabitant's complexity through their life course there.Therefore, we have developed prefabricated façade-ceiling-roof components, gathered in a catalogue.
How to introduce in a new building of housing the traditional aesthetics of facade of the old town of Barcelona?The proposal tries to introduce the shapes and textures of the traditional architecture of the context with the technologies of a prefabricated facade in order to combine the lightness of a rainscreen solution with the texture and materials of the place.The result is a plaster facade with open joints that remark the horizontals, aiming to give the shapes and shadows of the old balconies of Ciutat Vella.
This project is called Isarhof, wich means in german “the yards of Isar”, as a reference to those empty spaces trhough the school, and at the same time, the proximity to the Isar river. I wanted to implement a three-yard systemdifferentiated, where the urban life is developed and at the same time the day to day of the students. These gaps generated by the building itself and the elimination of some pre-existing ones, generate separate interstitial spaces.
It is not possible to talk about facades without mentioning a very unique façade for the moment when it was built, and that even today continues being a reference.
The first point that draws our attention is the constructive system of own design, lightweight, based on a system of mullions (similar to a curtain wall). Despite the verticality imposed by the system, clearly visible from the outside elevation, the interior gives a fairly conventional image of blind parapet and horizontal windows.
The façade of Broadwalk House stands out for having exploited the potential of prefabricated concrete panels to the maximum.