TRANSFORMATION OF AN OLD DANCE HALL INTO A 4 APARTMENT BUILDING

Sant Esteve de Palautordera | 2019-2021

The project transforms the town’s old dance hall– later used as a commercial premiss– into a 4 apartment building. The site is in the old town’s Mayor street of Sant Esteve de Palautordera, a pedestrian area next to the village’s main commercial street (Carretera de Montseny), which is part of a residential fabric of buildings between party walls.

The proposal presents the following strategies:

- Preserving and pointing out the value of the constructive elements of interest in the existing building. The masonry pillar, the slabs made of metal joists and ceramic vaults, and the roof’s wooden truss, beams and joists were preserved.

- Reclaiming the original facade. The materiality and composition of the original facade is rediscovered by demolishing the ventilated external skin and the damaged areas of the masonry walls were cleaned up.

- Improving energy efficiency and structure of the building. The existing structure was reinforced to withstand the demands required for the new use of the building. The facades and roof of the building were isolated to increase the apartments’ interior comfort and meet the requirements of the current regulations.

The building-container that had been previously emptied of all uninteresting construction elements is used to materialize the strategies into a structural system of ceramic walls and wooden floors that splits the volume into 4 apartments (2 per floor) and a central hall performing 3 key functions for the building:

- Bioclimatic hall. A large openable skylight fills the space with light, ensures good solar gain and allows cross ventilation of the dwellings. In winter, the greenhouse effect will heat the air and the temperature inside the apartments will be increased by convection. In summer, the heat inside the dwellings will be dissipated thanks to the air renewal by the chimney effect.

- Patio for socializing. The hall acts as a transition between the street (exterior) and the dwellings (interior), a space inviting collective relationships between the apartments’ neighbors and the rest of the town’s residents.

- The lookout. The hall is an empty volume inside the building that facilitates the contemplation of the singular preserved elements from different points of view, including the perspectives from the inside of the apartments, the patio and the street.