Transformation of a transformation. El Roser Social Center by Gallego Arquitectura + Josep Ferrando Architecture

Description of project by Josep Ferrando Architecture + Gallego Arquitectura

The El Roser Social Center is located in the building of the former Reus remand prison, a building listed as a BCIL (Cultural Asset of Local Interest) and belonging to the Architectural Heritage Inventory of Catalonia.

The facility is an innovative program in Spain. It consists of a shelter for the homeless, a soup kitchen, and a community space, thus concentrating all the social services of the city, a feature that makes it the first comprehensive facility of its kind.

The proposal is the transformation of a transformation. The prison, built-in 1929, had been transformed into a school in 1979. This previous intervention is used to carry out a project in which the different temporary layers dialogue with each other, carrying out a selection process that shows the hidden constructive layers and their different transformations, putting them in value. 

The project respects and recovers the original building, uncovering its structure and the constructive typology of the period, hidden until now, to evoke an image of austerity.

The intervention works on different scales. On the one hand, a dialectic is established between the new elements, of a more ethereal, light, and tectonic character, contrasting with the composition and the stereotomic mineral materials of the existing, heavier structure.

On the other hand, the geometry of the "H" plan, which surrounds two courtyards, has new transversal openings that, through the visuals, permeabilize it in a "Palladian" way, eliminating the airtightness of the spaces. The reading, functioning, and routes of the building's interior are thus rethought, at the same time as it is also done at the urban level, altering the relationship with its immediate surroundings.

While the original prison was accessed from the main road through a monumental gateway with minimal sidewalk space, the proposal eliminates the wall that limited the courtyard of the prison building, turning it into an open public space given over to the city, allowing passersby to become aware of the facility through the continuity of its facades.

A slender steel structure becomes a gesture that recalls the now absent wall while stitching together three different historical periods. In turn, the preservation of the monumental portal bears witness to the missing wall and enhances the heritage value of the facility.

On another, more domestic scale, elements such as windows, wet cores, etc. are introduced by tangency reinforcing the idea of palimpsest.