THE BEAUTY OF OLD AGE

Fredy Massad and Alicia Guerrero Yeste

As intensely as by the modernist forms and spaces or by the labyrinthine shadows of the Barri
Gòtic, the architectural identity of Barcelona is also defined by the austere severity of buildings
reflecting the former importance of this city as an industrial area during the turn of the XIXth
century and the dawn of the XXth century.

In a manner that suggests the idea of the possible formulation of an introspective gaze, the
development of some cultural and civilian ambitions for this city going beyond the search of a
contemporary identity merely grounded on the delusions of showiness of some of the star-
buildings erected in Barcelona over the last decade, the recovery of many of those old factories,
survivors that had been abandoned for a long time, proposes conceptual solutions that
ultimately transcend the achievement of preserving and object of architecture heritage while
defining new solutions to reintegrate it to the city as a useful facility.

Architectural interventions such as the recently-opened venue for the Espai de Pintura
Contemporània Can Framis by Jordi Badia / BAAS or the conversion of Fabra & Coats former
factory building into a centre for the arts, are manifesting the way these structures are getting an
intense recognition as strongly distinctive feature –despite their silent and invisible presence- of
Barcelona’s urban identity. These buildings embody not only the sensitivity towards them is
being developed but also how their importance is being understood and reformulated. The
structural qualities of these buildings bestow them with a unique spatial flexibility and their
aesthetic qualities bestow them with connotations of power and endurance, embodying
somehow the potential to develop a real image of the city which can root within the substratum
of the city’s identity more coherently than those too-prosthetic star-buildings have.

The recovery of a building represented in this particular case an essential part of the client’s
intentions, Foundation Vila Casas, whose aim is spreading the relevance of Catalan art,
establishing their galleries in buildings that are somehow linked to the historical memory of
Catalonia. The foundation already owned two venues in Girona province – a restored palace
where the photographic collection is displayed, and a refurbished old cork factory now hosting
the sculpture collection – along with two art spaces in Barcelona, VolART, located in a
modernist building, and VolART2. The new facility joining this network exhibits the collection of
270 paintings made by artists either born or based in Catalonia and which are representative of
the artistic trends of the second half of the XXth century, and is also due to host temporary
shows. It has been chosen because it constitutes an architectural document of the social and
economical history of Barcelona’s Industrial Revolution and the precariousness of most of the
buildings built around that area, strictly designed and erected only to serve to functional
purposes and lacking any defined organizational criteria to sustain their growth other than a
continual process of addition of very heterogeneous bodies.

Can Framis was one of the first factories built in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona. It was in
the business of textile production and was a maverick industrial complex in the area from the
second half of the XIXth century until the middle of the first decade of the XXth century, despite
the crisis that made the business went through when the food, chemical and metallurgical
sectors took over by the beginning of last century.

The industrial complex adapted its relationship with the urban fabric, in accordance to the
guidelines of Cerdà Plan, while its interior constituted itself as a relatively disorganized unit
because of the progressive addition of new sheds and outbuildings. Around the decade of the
1950’s, the production buildings belonging to about a score of different types of industrial
sectors were agglutinated on the site. This growth, which outwards its premises defined itself
under the appearance of a well-integrated unit, produced unintentionally a specific urbanism
defined by the irregularity of its layout and a visual carelessness caused by the variety of
heights and typologies of the buildings it contained, being its allure of decadent industrial
landscape its most crucial aesthetic value.

In 2004, the 22@ Urban Planning Office carried out the selective demolition of a part of the
complex, leaving only three naves standings –one of them had to be eventually knocked down-
and assessed the fundamental elements which were important to protect and highlight when a
refurbishment of the building would be undertaken, these have been aspects seriously taken
into account by BAAS in order to articulate carefully their design for this museum facility.

His intervention has focused specifically in two tasks: on one hand, the refurbishment of the
structures and façades of the naves and the construction of an inter-connecting body to
organize the visitor’s promenade, creating also a patio that becomes simultaneously a corridor
and a multi-purpose area. The refurbishing task has mainly consisted in carrying out the
consolidation of sheds by means of a new inner metallic structure, reconstructing the wrought
with concrete tiles and building the roofs with zinc plates, supported by new wooden
enjambments mimicking the original ones.

Badia has used concrete that fuses with pavements. A layer of grey painting protects the
existing walls and unifies, not concealing, the different strata and the interventions that had
been performed over the buildings during their lifespan of two centuries, and generating a
unique texture for the present building through that synthesis of integral elements (different
types of masonry, stones, arches, closed windows…) something that could be called an
abstract reading of the material history of the building (marks that could be metaphorically be
regarded as wounds and scars). The parts of the new building have been made with clear
concrete, posing a direct reference to the paradigm of factory aesthetics and also in a deliberate
attempt to make the building propose a contrast between its own identity and the one of the
high-tech buildings surrounding it. It is also necessary noting that Jordi Badia remarks that the
concrete acquires a significant prominence in his intervention, as this material is representative
of the present time albeit it does not restrict at all the potentiality of the sheds to evolve.

90 % of the 5.800m2 total surface is used as exhibition space; the rest is occupied by a 90m2
pedagogical workshop area, warehouse and management offices. The proposed exhibition area
is defined around the basic museum patterns: wide galleries, formal austerity, white walls and a
maximized use of natural light in order to create the adequate visual conditions for optimum
viewing of the artworks. The visitor transits inside the building through a continuous descending
path, being the staircases the only formal points of the promenade.

The creation of a garden around the building, located a meter and a half below the level of
Cerdà gridlock, aims at producing a kind of effect of isolation of the indoors space, so its
introspective atmosphere becomes enhanced. Ivy and white poplar trees will try to convey an
impression of decadence and melancholy, evoking the past times where the origins of the
building must be traced and also aiming to juxtapose the site’s identity and the essentially new
and contemporary aspect of its surroundings.

The approach of Badia to this project represents a new outstanding example of the way these
old industrial structures are allowing architects to explore into new senses to turn the task of
dealing with the preexisting thing into a work that it is more interesting to analyze from the
perspective of reinterpretation, rather than assuming it merely as refurbishment. The respectful
sensitivity of Badia towards the original structure has led him to discover a poetic interpretation
to generate by means of a careful and well-controlled intervention, not only an useful update but
essentially an expression that has made the old factory mutate into a serene presence.