The project attempts to gather these concerns and give them shape in the organization of the spaces and in the relationship with the city.

The first strategy is the recovery of the central street between the two naves. We propose a kind of passage that during the building’s operating hours will become like another street in the city from where all the circulations and activities of the centre are organized. The public condition of this passage reinforces the idea of opening the centre to the city and allows citizens to use the same spaces and interact with users. Instead of a closed and separate building, this interior pedestrian street will allow a much more porous relationship between the entity and the city. A much more direct and open relationship between users and citizens.

It is proposed to empty the floors and roof of the central body while maintaining the facades that give it its industrial character and the beams that stabilize them. Like a vestige completely emptied from the inside, where it rains and the air flows like any street but at the same time preserving all its history still present in its walls and transverse beams. A street that emerges from the selective demolition of the roofs but that continues to evoke what its recent history had been.

In order to connect the two ends of the passage and solve the difference in elevation between the two parts of the city, a staircase-staircase appears in the final section that solves the unevenness and allows access to the complementary programs on the lower level. This staircase ends up giving an urban and cultural dimension to the passage and invites it to be not only a space for passage but also a place to stay.

Along the two main (and original) naves, the different spaces of the centre are organized, accessed directly from the interior street but at the same time interconnected internally. These are activities that combine main uses such as; workshops, training classrooms, kitchen or dining rooms with more complementary spaces such as; bathrooms, meeting rooms or warehouses and that at the same time respond to different types of users according to the level of their disabilities.

The need to subdivide spaces within an enormous space and at the same time the need to reinforce the existing trusses allows an organization of the spaces and their hierarchies based on these structural reinforcements.

New beams perpendicular to the existing trusses convert the original unidirectional system into a bidirectional structure where the new beams reduce the light of the existing ones and allow them to be preserved. These intersections between new and old structures create very subtle spatial patterns that follow the sameconstructive and material logic as the original and that allow the space to be hierarchized without losing or going against its original nature. These new structural orders superimposed on the existing ones also help us to place the most closed programs -which will become great pillars- and at the same time central skylights in each main space that qualify and characterize them. The opaque boxes house the closed programs while also taking on the weight of the new beams that in turn take on the weight of the original trusses. At the intersection between the existing trusses and the new beams, the light boxes appear, skylights that illuminate the centre of the main spaces.

The project attempts to extend the wood-wood work that currently characterizes the original construction where the overlap between systems (tread-strap-sheet metal) creates a characteristic intricate texture of wooden slats of different dimensions. The new beams, the new closed boxes and the new skylights will follow the same nature of wood-wood overlap as if the same constructive system that configured the roof were extended to also solve the new needs of the building.

The new roof continues to have an exterior finish of Arabic tiles and retains the original straps and battens but replaces the tiles with a lighter solution that allows for thermal insulation solutions according to current energy requirements while allowing the lower layer of the roof to function as an acoustic absorber finished with a porous veil held between the wooden battens.

The different layers of the new roof also configure the skylights, making the roof solution unfold and the battens and finishes -placed vertically- help us configure the type of light and the presence of the skylight.

The different dimensions of the spaces and the different relationships between main and secondary spaces create a sequence of linked spaces that allow us to understand the large size of the buildings but at the same time manage to create more domestic corners and spaces within a whole. The skylights help to focus attention on the main spaces and in particular to focus on use and people. The central and zenithal natural light emphasizes what is happening and the architecture takes on a more discreet role. Light and structure establish an intense bond with the environment and somehow help us feel part of the world. Feeling the force of gravity or the changes in the quality of natural light transport us to a more emotional situation. We are convinced that this is an institution that needs to rediscover this existential dimension.

Beyond the new structural interventions with wood, the rest of the interventions try to be very discreet in order to preserve the original essence of the building and all its marks and transformations. To isolate the facades, an interior transposal has been chosen, finished with exposed ceramic wall panels that follow the rhythm of the facade.

On the outside, the original holes that had been disfigured are recovered, recovering the full-empty relationship but at the same time trying to preserve the character of the micro transformations that the building has undergone. Preserving its wounds and wrinkles that tell us about the passage of time. We believe that this sum of additions, subtractions, openings or subsequent walling-up define part of its soul and we think that it is very important to show them so as not to lose this accumulated time that makes historic buildings so convincing. In this sense, we propose to remove all the coverings to rediscover the structural transformations that explain the changes and stages of the building. It is in the structure where we find its genetics and its transhistorical condition.

The openings are preserved or recovered in their format and in cases where we have technical or service spaces attached to the facade that do not need a window, we convert those openings into trombe walls (and dynamic walls) to help air-condition the interior spaces and at the same time they serve as an inlet for pre-treated renewal air.

The good level of thermal insulation, natural ventilation, trombe walls and solar protections guarantee us a very good passive operation. A building that will live half inside and half in the passage where the natural condition of the climate will also be part of this new opening of the institution towards the exterior.

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Converting the centre into a space much more connected with the outside, full of light and with the possibility of opening up and ventilating the whole house. A space in between that – although programmed and deeply architectural – lets in the natural intensity of the climate from the roof and divides the house in half, emptying it, making it more spacious and letting it breathe. A space that, due to its less domestic conditions of height, light and ventilation, manages to convey a feeling of being outside. The verticality of the central space and the zenith opening organize air and light. They make the invisible visible by sliding natural light to the bottom of the atrium while stimulating the speed of ventilation and the exit of hot air upwards to the exterior.

The program that is organized around the central space is extensive and quite fragmented. We propose a second categorization of the program that hierarchizes it so that each floor has four important spaces that are larger and higher, and these are complemented by secondary spaces that are smaller and clearly of less height.

The hierarchy between rooms is used to absorb the strong irregularity of the plot and solve all the spaces in a regular and orthogonal way in the main pieces. As in an excavated architecture, the different directionality of the spaces is absorbed by the thickness of the walls.

The main pieces always maintain the same position and dimension on all floors, while the complementary pieces vary, adapting and occupying the interstitial and irregular space left between the main pieces. Large structural walls, very thick and heavy, give the house a lot of thermal stability, but at the same time are selectively hollowed out to accommodate the smallest – and often the most sensitive – programs inside.

The great walls have been built with “poor” cast-in-place concrete. A mixture with very little cement and a selection of sands and gravels which, applied with a compaction technique similar to that of rammed earth, is a very robust and monolithic solution with a lot of thermal inertia but at the same time porous enough to help regulate and stabilize the temperature, humidity and the acoustics of the spaces.

The ceilings of the main spaces are always as high as possible and made of wood in order to differentiate them as much as possible from the complementary spaces, which are entirely mineral spaces excavated within the walls.

The central space is the most collective, the most primordial and special in the house. It is an atrium on the ground floor and first floor combined with a cloister superimposed on the second floor. Two archetypes with a very forceful geometry and dimensions that fit one on top of the other and from where the distributions are organized.

The atrium is the highest space in the house with four central pillars that free the hole in the central courtyard and that border and frame a virtual space in the middle of the house where the living room will be located.

The upper cloister is a space with similar characteristics, with lots of height and natural light, but without the centrality of the atrium. In the cloister the use, instead of occupying the centre, surrounds the courtyard. It cedes importance to light and ventilation and is located on the perimeter, expanding circulation spaces and sharing with the surrounding rooms. It is an extension of the rooms, the collective space of the rooms.

A house within the city, which due to its typological and constructive characteristics reconnects with traditional Mediterranean characteristic models of the city of Barcelona such as the Gothic courtyards and its bioclimatic and well-being values. Spaces designed to incorporate and exalt natural light, air stratification or the force of gravity. A house that tries to recover relationships with what surrounds us; an urban house.

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Inside, the kitchen is the most emblematic and characteristic space of the house. A large room (100m2) located at the south-west end, double height, with views to the west, towards the vineyard, and open to the garden and the pond to the south. A multi-purpose space capable of hosting multiple events around gastronomy (large family and friends meals, private tastings of wines from the estate, etc.), or simply to host common day-to-day family activities.

Attached to the kitchen, a large L-shaped porch is incorporated into the house. The porch makes explicit the rooting of the life of the farm in the nearby land (to step) and to the distant territory (to look). To the west, it connects the house with the vineyards, with Pals as a backdrop. To the south, it controls the sun and extends the kitchen, and its activities, towards the sunny garden and pool.

Two spatial sequences, which intersect in the kitchen, synthesize all the values ​​of the project: the first, from south to north, crosses: the pond, the sunny garden, the porch, the kitchen, two rooms, the new opening between buttresses and , finally, behind trees and vines and wetlands, Montgrí. The second succession, from east to west, begins by leaving behind the Medes – and the Mediterranean – and facing the main facade of the original farmhouse, the old entrance door, the hall, the kitchen, the porch, facing the exceptional sunset.

The concrete walls, poured in 25 cm layers and lightened with arlite (which gives them insulating capacity), not only bring structural and aesthetic attributes to the house, but also thermal behavior: inertia. Inertia which, together with minimized openings and the predominant massiveness in front of the few gaps, configures an almost self-sufficient climatic tool, heir to the tradition of ancestral farmhouses.

This passive behavior is complemented by a radiant floor system (geothermal) and, in the summer, with an extra contribution of air (cooled as it passes through the chamber of the sanitary forge) that is poured into the hottest rooms under cover of the first floor.

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As the plot provides good views and pleasant surroundings, an additive system generates the building and intensifies relations between the inhabited spaces and their environs. All rooms face outward, toward the landscape. At the same time, however, these rooms enclose a cloister-like central atrium where the services and circulations are concentrated, giving generous natural light and cross ventilation to all the spaces. The project shapes 3 continuous rings – terrace, program, and circulation – with the compact vertical communication cores placed inside the atrium to serve 4 dwellings per level. This layout yields 136 apartments. The central atrium, a sheltered and slightly tempered space, ventilates the stairwell, nuances the dwellings, and makes the residences more comfortable.
Each apartment is shaped by a series of identical non-hierarchical modules, each 10.6 m2, which can be used as living room, kitchen, or bedroom, with outward-facing transition spaces surrounding each room. Along the outer wall, a continuous 1.5-meter-wide balcony runs toward the atrium while an almost symmetric corridor space acts like a glazed porch and converts bathrooms, storage space, or lounge room annexes. Designed as a denser plinth, the ground floor does not use the atrium directly. More conventional, compact typologies are employed to resolve the vestibules, following the same spatial matrix.

A hybrid structure with screens and concrete slabs separates the dwellings, combined with structural concrete slim pillars that permit short, efficient spans and characterize the space in each room.

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The site boundary is marked by a stone wall, a former handball structure rising 10 metres at one point, which follows an irregular line. The geometry of this party wall, an amalgam of stone, brick, and plaster rendering, was the starting point for the project.

The compulsory planning regulations and a desire to build the largest possible pavilion, led to the design of two differentiated zones: a large volume on a regular plan, as wide and high as possible, for the winemaking pavilion, and the remaining Z-shaped zone —the passage— where the spaces around the pavilion are gathered and employed, extending like an inner lane following the geometry of the stone wall which acts as a property boundary. This space, an extension of the site’s public zone, is the main entrance to the precinct, a circulation and reception space for visitors and wine tasting groups.
The interior is a big three-storey high space where the wine fermentation vats are located. This is the heart of the project, the space which really defines the winery. All the other spaces are articulated around it. It contains a large volume of fresh air, insulated by deep walls, up to 1.75 m. thick. The building is cooled by a system of load-bearing brick walls with multiple layers set between pilasters, generating pockets of circulating air between the walls. Smaller rooms within these large walls house the winery’s complementary activities. On the ground floor, a series of chapel-like cavities follow the rhythm of the walls’ structural pilasters around the perimeter of the central space. They visually connect the building to the passage but also facilitate manoeuvring and storage for the machinery in the winemaking cellar. Looking upwards, the nave is dark and dense, while on the ground floor, it expands, opening to the light in the passage. This passage is where both grapes and visitors are received. Here there is a thermal transition into the cellar along the gentle slope that leads into the inner level of the building and the roadway at the rear as well, with several steps to resolve the height difference.
This partly outdoor route follows a succession of roofs with different heights, combined with slabs which form broad landings between the steps. Rainwater builds up on the green roofs until it spills over from one to the next, descending ever more slowly as it flows through the passage, helping to freshen the atmosphere and water the vegetation along the way. These slabs provide shelter from not only the rain but also from direct sunlight, creating a cool ambiance for the passage like a terraced garden where an outdoor tavern can be installed for wine sales, tastings, and snacks.

The most technologically demanding spaces —the barrel zone and the storeroom for bottled wine— need a perfectly stable moisture and temperature regime. For this reason, they are in the basement, in direct contact with the ground. The major challenge, however, is the vinification hall, with equally demanding thermal requirements that must be fulfilled without interaction with the ground. The first strategy is to generate the greatest possible interior height to facilitate the stratification of the warm air at the top, away from the barrels. Secondly, the hydro-thermal stability of the interior is aided by maximising the inertia of the building systems.
The third bioclimatic strategy is the roof, whose central part is a cooling device which employs radiation from the night sky to refrigerate the floor slab. A closed-circuit water cycling system runs between two levels: an upper level in contact with the outdoor environment, where water is used at night as a heat transfer fluid to dissipate the indoor ambient warmth, and a lower level in contact with the floor, where freshness is transferred to the interior. This large-scale exchange between the pavilion’s interior and the temperature of the universe through radiation is an inexhaustible refrigeration source.
The street frontage is capped with tiles and clad with a thin layer of lime mortar which helps to contextualize the building in the village and to clearly differentiate its external materiality from the interior passage. Viewed from outside, the building has a somewhat vernacular presence, but as one enters this corridor, the building systems become deconstructed and slowly explains the nature of the complex.

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and doses of limestone and cement. This traditional mortar base will be combined with small insulating particles of injected recycled glass. Instead of stacking, the wall will employ a formwork system and will be erected using a technique combining rammed earth and Cyclopean methods. The exterior surfaces facing the street will be bush-hammered to accentuate the stone, while the interior faces will be left with the raw finish of the formwork. The wall varies its thickness along the plot, and in many areas becomes wide enough to enclose the dwelling’s more static elements and those requiring more privacy, such as beds, bathrooms, laundry room, pantry, cupboards and sinks.
The longitudinal relationships are resolved ahead of the static programme attached to the wall, creating a long sequence of verandas that allow for sunlight to be enjoyed during the winter period. When the weather is nice, the verandas can be fully opened to become a large porch facing the garden. A transition between climates in a building that evolves constantly throughout the year.

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