INHABITED CANOPY
St. Vicenç dels Horts. Spain
2015
The project site is one of the last big empty spaces in the city fabric and it has a strategic position, dwelling with three neighbourhoods with different urban scales. It used to be a public school but since the administration moved it across the street only the perimetral walls remain and it has become a phyisical boundary, a non accessible gap that has to bordered in order to go from one neighbourhood to another.
In order to fill out the urban gap, a mixed public-private program is proposed: Space for offices, a youth centre, some workshops for folklore associations, a multi-functional big space, a public space for weekly pop-up markets and 40 housing units for young and older people.
The project consists of an inhabited roof, where the patio houses are, which shelters the public free space defiined by the voids in the roof (to let light in) and the ones in the ground (connection to the offices).
The free ground space performs as a plaza that not only the building users but the city neighbours are able to use because it’s at street level.
The building deals with the context creating a long shadow that welcomes the pedestrian into the plaza. Being long allows the housing program to grow horizontally, creating empty spaces that connect the different pragram layers and maximizing the houses surface and turning circulation spaces into public areas for the inhabitatns.