Godó i Trias Factory

The goal here was to give a completely different approach to the factory by using it as a multi-flat building for Syrian refugees, trying to merge both Syrian and Spanish cultures in a single project without forcing any of the two. With this idea in mind we decided to make a thorough analysis of the site and a deep research on the psychological adaptation that both refugees (regardless of the place they come from) and the hosting country go through. After this we came to realize that trying to include a very defined culture-driven architecture in a hosting country doesn’t achieve a cultural mix after all, rather, it creates an unintentional segregation that puts the tag “foreign” on that place.

This could lead to a benefit in some specific cases, where the goal is to differentiate the project from the rest of the hosting architecture (pavilions are a good example), in order to generate a contrast that defines a specific culture, but one should keep in mind that those types of projects don’t usually give a sense of belonging to the people that live nearby due to its strong cultural definition.

With this concept, we gave the existing buildings specific functions that would in one side work as a place for social gathering, and on the other side would work as a residential place, giving the project both aesthetic reason and social nourishment. As a second step we decided to give the factory’s appearance a twist, by creating diagonal pathways in the first (commercial) building, creating a dynamic interaction between the visitor and the building. We also kept most of its original design and combined it with contemporary architecture which was the detail that would show the mix and embrace of the two cultures in an abstract way, trying to show the old and the contemporary in a balanced perspective.