The building has 20 homes, one of which will be used as a bridging apartment for families in the process of social reintegration. The houses are designed from a grid of diaphanous 16m² pieces coinciding with the cross-laminated wood structure. These pieces allow very diverse divisions and distributions, allowing the user to decide on their spaces. Each home starts from a fully equipped 50m² base, corresponding to the small typologies (S). This basic unit is extended with one or two pieces, becoming M or L typologies. The pieces that this extension allows are spaces managed by the cooperative. This management allows a real flexibility of the system, and the houses appropriate them individually or shared.

There are 2 types of structure that optimize the functions of each material, cost, speed of construction and environmental impact. In contact with the ground and the street, a reinforced concrete structure is proposed (minimum mineral material). For homes and community spaces, a cross-laminated wood structure is proposed, offering comfort, healthy spaces and having a very positive environmental impact on the building as a whole (organic and light material). It is a light building, where reusable and removable materials predominate, which makes it possible to reduce the foundation and directly the materials of mineral origin used in the building.

Text provided by the architect.

The main burial area is part of a lowered excavated part of the cemetery that is surrounded by gabion walls and the mausoleum-like burial plots, which obstructs the visitor’s vision from the surrounding context secluding them in an area where the sky is the only visible entity outside of the central burial area. Unlike the first tier, the second tier of the cemetery has more traditional burial plots that are separated and spread out rather than the mausoleum-like burial plots below. Also, on the second level, there is a chapel and monastery that remain unfinished; however, the unfinished aspects are not lacking, by any means, spatially rather they are void of definition and detail. Yet, the lack of information and detailing compliments the overall sensations of the project where the spaces are open and void to retain the experiences of solitude and serenity.

As one enters the site, one confronts a set of cor-ten steel poles that double as gates to the cemetery – the poles are likened to the crosses at Calvary. From the main entrance, there is a processional winding pathway that descends into the main burial area; the pathway is lined with concrete “loculi” – mausoleum burial plots – that wrap around the depressed space as a transition from tier to tier. The windy path is conceptualized as the river of life that moves from a wide open expanse in the Catalonian hills to a secluded memorial space excavated below the horizon. The circulation through the cemetery adheres to a more processional effect that focuses less on the organization of the burial plots, but rather the experience.

The materials of the Igualada cemetery tie the project seamlessly back into the landscape. Miralles employed earthy materials of concrete, stone, and wood into the project. The gabion walls, the worn/aged concrete, and the wooden railroad ties embedded in the stone groundscape evoke the hard and rough landscape of the surrounding hills. The earthy tones of the materials transform the architecture into a natural aesthetic creating the appearance that cemetery has long been part of the site.

The Igualada Cemetery is in a sense an organic architecture that integrates into the natural landscape as an extension of the Catalonian hills. It is just as much a part of the landscape as the people that visit it. Even Miralles after his sudden death in 2000 is buried at the Igualada Cemetery, which in a sense completes the cycle of Miralles life: past, present, and future all clinging onto the Igualada Cemetery.

Text provided by the architect.