Our goal was to make comprehensive and readable the original space. We wanted to show the continuity of the arches and vaults throughout the whole plan. The functional divisions required by the program are glass screens with a steel structure designed for the occasion, framing the load-bearing walls. A technical floor houses the facilities, streching as a red cloak that gives strength to the succession of arches and vaults that characterize this space.
The other interventions, the new staircase, elevator glazing, draft furniture, come to reinforce the contrast between a powerful architecture and a modern, somewhat minimalist intervention.
The restoration of the archives at Sants-Montjuïc is part of the second phase of the works at the headquarters of the municipality. As always when dealing with restoration, in association with A+M Architects, my teachers and mentors in the hard discipline of restoration.
The meticulous work consists on the sanitation, modernization and renovation of the basement of the headquarters of the District in the Carretera de Sants. Before it had been used as a warehouse, dungeon of the National Police headquarters and a dusty and empoverished archive.
Our work here has been to recover and reveal the architectural qualities of a magnificient plant of load-bearing walls and Catalan vaults. In order to do so we have cleared the ground of the successive additions that the building has suffered throughout its history.
Yosko Navarro Arquitectura 