La Raval is a housing cooperative based on a right-to-use model, located on municipal land in the historic center of Manresa. It represents an alternative model characterized by collective ownership and a non-speculative nature. The project is self-promoted by its future residents, who share a desire for a more communal and shared way of life. These core concepts, along with the cooperative’s commitment to activating and regenerating its surroundings, are central to the architectural design.

The building is organized around a small central courtyard, which serves as the core of communal life and around which circulation is arranged. From the entrance, one can observe how the courtyard connects to the ground floor and ascends, accompanied by an open staircase and generous circulation paths, all the way to the roof. An exterior evacuation staircase provides double circulation, allowing the interior staircase to remain open and to illuminate the courtyard laterally along its entire height.

Text provided by the architects.

La entrada La Raval Housing Cooperative se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

Sometimes surprising coincidences might occur. Between 2003 and 2011 we conducted the architectural intervention on Sant Francesc Convent , in Santpedor, to transform it into an auditorium. The project was carried out on a former convent built in the 18th century where only the church was remaining; the conventual wings and cloister had disappeared. Five years later, located in Manresa, we were commissioned to develop an inverse assignment from the previous one: an intervention on the Old Saint Ignatius College, a former religious complex based on a convent structure whose baroque church was demolished; only the wings of the old Jesuit college placed around a cloister remained. In both cases, the architectonical intervention was done on buildings amputated of one of its two essential elements; in the present project, the old baroque church.

The construction of the new accesses to the old Jesuit college is framed in the global renovation project of the entire built complex, which should grant to rationalize, refresh, and rethink the spaces of the preexisting museum. The planned interventions should allow the building to host Baroque Museum of Catalonia and Manresa’s City History Museum.

La entrada Baroque Museum of Catalonia se publicó primero en Global Spaces.