Apartments for older people with services attachments and public parking
Located in the center of Terrassa, post-industrial city that lies about 30 km from Barcelona, the building occupies a site where once there had been a Police Station.
The need to provide rental spaces with anexed services for the elderly in the old town, is what prompted our customer, the city council, to build this building.
It is in this enclave of narrow streets and densified blocks, where the proposal was born, based mainly in the oxygenation of the interior space of the plot, draining and connecting it with the city.
The proportions of the plot, 30x100m, and the low-rise buildings allowed in the area, makes that its front seems longer, with an almost exaggerated horizontality (north-west façade).
However, in the face of shorter length and greater height, the street is wider and that is why it was set the connection between the courtyard and the city through a generous porch that crosses the building at ground floor.
This large covered space is also used as access to 213 parking spaces that occupies the two basement floors.
The texture and shape of the new building is proposed as a counterpoint to the immediate environment. It can be interpreted as an opposite to what has been built, with only a nod to the local architecture, such as the use of the classic shutter of the area.
The monolithic appearance of the building is achieved by the unique combination of two materials, black prefabricated concrete panels and trays of smooth and perforated zinc.
Inside, central corridors, zenith lit, serve the battery of apartment with equal form and distribution. Only the building's common areas, library, gym and social room, blur the rigid backbone of the corridor.
The proposed facilities are the result of a major effort, both economic and projecting, to reduce the energy impact of the building. Some examples of it are: the recycling of the grey water for filling the tanks of toilets, the rainwater recovery for watering the garden, the use of the hot water excess produced by solar panels to generate cool air in summer.
