With the installation of the lift to connect the different levels in two parts of Gironella, the Cal Metre road became a new everyday route for the town’s people and, as such, needed to be developed. The proposal was to restore the avenue as a place to walk and linger, recalling its use as an approach to the late nineteenth-century textile colonies. The project also set out to include the space of this old thoroughfare in the public space of the town as a new place to pause and view the riverside landscape, a potential venue for such varied events as trade fairs, shows and other possible activities associated with the industrial warehouses.

The project enhances the existing trees, mostly plane trees. It comprises a central strip of acid wash concrete and 60% of permeable surfaces right around the perimeter. At the edges, the intervention is softened by a greenway, with joints of 5 and 15 cm, providing transition and protection. Along the avenue, five patterned “carpets” are created, paved with reused cobblestones from the streets in the old town of Gironella, laid with open joints, which form the resting areas, in each case with an existing tree and two concrete benches. The existing fence was removed and replaced by a metal bar railing that allows views of the river.

Text provided by the architects.

La entrada Cal Metre’s path se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

PHASE 1 (2015-2017):

The remains of Jorba Castle, a historic heritage monument, stand on the top of Puig de la Guardia, a hill of 549 m, forming a backdrop to the municipality of Jorba and a prime vantage point overlooking the territory of Anoia. The castle complex represents the sedimentation of different uses between the tenth and the nineteenth centuries. The project consisted in carrying out phase one of a master plan drafted to promote collective awareness of the origin of the castle as a lookout point and to restore local people’s relationship with the landscape.

The aim of the intervention was to facilitate access to the watchtower. The project took the form of moving 300 m3 earth produced by the archaeological excavation. All of the removed earth is use to create a new topography that extends and stabilises the route leading up to the vantage point. We designed an ascent of five runs of steps, following the restored structures that mark out the limits of the castle. The stairway comprises 20×12 cm timber sleepers, 60 cm and 120 cm wide. Finally, the way up to the top is marked out by eight corrugated rods with a diameter of 12 mm, and 18 metres of rope suspended 60 cm above the ground, indicating the route and the area that can be visited.

La entrada Jorba’s Castle se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

In the south of the municipality of Puig-reig stand the remains of the heritage site of the castle of Merola, dating from the late thirteenth century. Due to the documented earth tremors that shook Catalonia in the 1500s, only one of the faces of the defense tower, originally with a rectangular plant of 5 x 3,8 m and 14,8 m height, is still standing. The detachment of a part of its coronation in 2016 puts Puig-reig Town Council on alert. The high risk of collapse, with the subsequent loss of the monument, called for an intervention to guarantee the preservation of the remains and recover the building for the village and as an attraction for visitors.

Two basic lines of intervention were adopted to meet these aims: the consolidation of the surviving remains and the reinforcement of the medieval structure. Reinforcement takes the form of a timber structure comprising 18 sections of 14-cm square that follow the original perimeter of the stone wall. Like scaffolding, it structurally stabilizes the pre-existing construction, recovers the original volume and restores its function in the territory as a lookout and defense point.

La entrada Merolas Tower se publicó primero en Global Spaces.