Guadi La Coma Artists' Residences
PARC MODERNISME
The project follows from an in-depth analysis and appreciation of Guadí’s built work: exploring the wonders of his architectural, structural, and philosophical mind and testing these concepts in a modern context.
Rather than proposing one repetitive architectural expression, this project contains a taxonomy of different articulations. These explore the variety and depth of Guadí’s work, while retaining recurring themes, to produce a singular, cohesive architectural composition.
The Masterplan starts with a simple concept: a vision of an inhabited landscape. Exploration is encouraged as you meander through paths and discover the different volumes amongst local species of plants.
To respect the scale and local context, program elements are broken down to their most basic components, creating a series of delicate and sensitive insertions that rest on the landscape.
The resulting proposal creates a new landmark, integrated into the landscape, informed by historical context and directed by the needs of its visitors.
HOSTEL
At the centre of the scheme stands the hostel. The arched volume follows the curvature in plan of the natural topography, and defines the central plaza.
As you enter the double height lobby space, a carved skylight above creates dapple light while access to the upper floors, cooking facilities and ground floor rooms is located at ground level.
Catenary shells stack to form both the primary structure and define the hostel rooms.
The facade articulation is defined from the catenary curve and the offset windows, from which ruled surfaces intersect leaving the fine accented edges of the surfaces.
ARTISTS SPACES AND WORKSHOPS
Spread out radially across the site a series of ‘bottles’ encourage movement around the site, and incite exploration of the artists’ workshop, co-working area, yoga and other spaces.
The artists’ workshop sits at the heart of this cluster. Intersecting the bottles creates a central exhibition space which can be further divided with rotating panels, adding flexibility to the artists’ process.
Sustainable construction through recycling of the existing site stone bricks for facade materials helps ensures minimal impact to the environment, while programmatically terraces offer the expansion for self-sustainable farms.
ARTISTS RESIDENCES
For the artists residences, the simple geometric principle of intersecting cones creates an enfilade of parabolas, defining the thresholds between each of the rooms.
Once you enter through the front door, framed views of the gardens create a sense of calm and well-being. A central dining space sits at the heart of the house. Secondary and tertiary spaces radiate and intersect around this central node.
Volumes are sized to suit their function, which gives a playful variation to the composition of the masses.
Internally, the geometry of the ruled surfaces is expressed in the form work, directly expressing the lines of structural forces.
