Funeral Home at Sant Joan Despí's Cemetery, by Batlle i Roig arquitectes
31/10/2013.
Sant Joan Despí [BCN] Spain
metalocus, ROBERTO ALIA
metalocus, ROBERTO ALIA
Memory of project by Batlle i Roig Arquitectura
The proposal for the new funeral home in Sant Joan Despí arise from understanding the intervention as the end of the urban ensemble formed by the Fontsanta park and the existing cemetery. Its location is based on the following criteria:
1. Improving the existing cemetery facilities with a new funeral home, using construction systems and technical solutions that will promote sustainability and energy efficiency.
2. Dignify the entrance of the existing cemetery, which is quite degraded, organizing and equipping it with differentiated pedestrian and parking areas.
3. Integrate landscaping in the proposal respecting the park character.
The building integration on site parts from the adaptation to the existing topography, with a set of pitched roofs on the terrain. The vegetation treatment of part of these roofs pretends to fade with the adjacent green slopes. With this strategy, the apparent building volume is reduced, lowering the vision of the construction and increasing the green surfaces.
The 700 m² floor plan of the building, lays out an organization in two areas clearly differentiated, by a public area for users and a private area, for staff inner preparation and movement. A system of patios completes the layout of the floor plan, organizing, ranking and illuminating the spaces and establishing filters between different ambiances.
The structural system is composed of walls and reinforced concrete slabs formed with pinewood boards and corten steel pillars made of flat bars. The materialization is completed with natural stone pavements and wooden vertical facing producing interior warmth. The steel pillars generate a light gradient, establishing visual filters and protecting the interior from the direct sunlight. This materiality determines the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitor’s mourning at every turn.
In essence light and matter.
BATLLE I ROIG, ARQUITECTES is an architecture practice set up in 1981 by Enric Batlle and Joan Roig that works on a wide variety of projects including construction, landscape and territorial planning. Enric Batlle and Joan Roig are both university lecturers and have published several specialist books. Their work has received various awards and been featured in a number of publications.
The practice of BATLLE I ROIG, ARQUITECTES is located in Esplugues de Llobregat (Barcelona province) and covers 600 m² in a building designed by the practice, which is made up of more than 40 professionals in all fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, engineering and technical architecture.
Enric Batlle Durany lectures in Urbanism and Landscape Architecture at the Vallès School of Architecture (ETSAV) and on the Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). He gained his master’s degree in Landscape Architecture and his doctorate in 2002 with the thesis “The Garden of the Metropolis”, for which he received the extraordinary doctorate prize from the Doctorate Commission of the UPC.
In 1981 he founded, along with Joan Roig, Batlle i Roig Architects. Their office has developed numerous building projects, urban planning and landscape. He lectures in Landscape Architecture in the Department of Urbanism and Territorial Development at the ETSAV, and is involved in the Architecture and Project workshops there, and in the master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at the UPC and in the School of Architecture of Navarre (Pamplona). His work has won several awards and has been the subject of several publications.
Joan Roig Duran has taught Architectural Projects at the ETSAB since 1984, and has lectured at the Barcelona School of Agriculture and been visiting professor at the following schools, among others: the Academie van Boukunst (Rotterdam, Holland); Delft University of Technology (Holland); the ILAUD-International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design (Urbino, Italy); the IUAV-Istituto Universitario di Architettura (Venice, Italy); the Faculty of Architecture (Genoa, Italy); the ITU, Faculty of Architecture of Istanbul (Turkey); Washington University (St. Louis, USA); the University of Illinois (Chicago, USA); the École Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles (France); the Technische Universität (Munich, Germany); Universität Stuttgart (Germany), and the School of Architecture of Navarre (Pamplona).
His work has won several awards and has been the subject of several publications.