Catalonia Construction Awards 2020

The Jury of the Catalonia Construction Awards has decided the selected candidacies from which the finalists in each category will emerge. Betarq with the Alella sociocultural centre is one of the candidates selected in the category of construction management. Here you can see the rest of the selected candidacies.

In the last edition Betarq was already a finalist in the same category with the Center for Comparative Medicine Trias i Pujol.

Socio-cultural equipment Alella

Designer: Pol Femenies Ureña from FEM Arquitectura

Description of the geometry of the building: The architecture of the equipment is based on the geometry of a module of 4.20m x 4.20m that rationalizes the structure and forms the roof, which is formed by prefabricated skylights of square plan. This module configures the structure of all the spaces of the lower floors: it is supported by the large-edged girders of the multipurpose room and fixes the position of the main girders of the house. From this modulation they establish the lights of the multipurpose room (14m) and the center (9.5m) and the width of the main atrium is formed. The beginning of the redesign is proposed in Santa Madrona Street, being the one with the straightest layout, leaving the façade to this much more aligned to the road than the façade in Santa Teresa Street, more set back as a result of the various expropriations of the land that was annexed to the house. This is how the geometry of the plant on the north front of the equipment is no longer so rigid, and responds not so much to the structural modulation as the gestures that imply the adaptation with the most immediate urban environment.

Description of the volume: The project consists of PB 2PP, except in the points set by the planning of PB 1PP in the front on Santa Teresa Street, and the height of the floors is limited by the maximum regulating height (9.70m), and which is taken from the center of the main façade of the building (north façade). Above this we only find the facilities spaces and skylights. Being a building with two facades to two different streets, it is considered, the main front of the plot that of Santa Teresa and Can Patatina streets. It takes precisely the level of the Plaza de Can Patatines as the main level of access on the ground floor, being at the same level of the atrium of the multipurpose room and at the level of the cafeteria of the house, enabling a small outdoor terrace space for the summer months. The floors are 3.50m between finishes, leaving double height spaces in the multipurpose room and the house, apart from the atrium that has all the free height.
To better integrate the large volume of the scenic box with Santa Madrona Street, it is removed at the second floor level to be the crowning of the façade at the height of the easels of the neighboring multi-family homes. For the north façade, the height helps to finish the party walls of these houses, which until now were naked and visible as a façade of the public space, and when it reaches land a canopy builds an intermediate access space, standing at the height of the construction of Can Patatina, which remains.

We show you some photographs taken during various phases of construction: