Refurbishment of the ancient Siglo XX Cooperative, in the Barceloneta neighbourhood, as a youth center.

The main motivation for the rehabilitation of the building is to recover it for the neighborhood, not only from a spatial and functional point of view, due to the fact that it will be a new local facility available to the residents, but also to recover a building with memory and a high historical, social and symbolic content for the inhabitants of Barceloneta. The intervention arises from this need to recover and explain this social memory. On the one hand, with the strict restoration of the most ‘noble’ façades and spaces (first and second floors), defining the character of the building, reinforcing and making explicit its spatial and architectural values. And on the other hand, in a complementary way, explaining the evolution of the place, the passage of time, the patinas, the construction systems, etc. with the rehabilitation of the ground and third floors, already very transformed. Time and construction are also heritage elements that too often we tend to erase or hide. Recognize an era, a moment, but also explain an evolution, a transformation. A necessary evolution that now will follow witha a new phase.

And with this double approach (restoration - rehabilitation) it is committed to maintaining and making the most of existing elements and spaces, accurately recognizing their values, to reinforce them, and their thecnical benefits, to maximize them. And it is from this approach that it is proposed to maintain the existing scale, as it is an important element in shaping the historical image of the site. Always with the idea of ​​not losing history, but with the aim of recovering it and making it the protagonist of the 21st century building.