Barcelona, Spain
Sardenya 356 Apartments is a residential project in Barcelona by Alonso Atienza Sánchez and Miguel Ángel Maure Blesa of Atienza Maure Arquitectos that employs a clever façade system using wooden shutters to beautiful effects.
The project is the construction of a building between party walls of 12 houses in Barcelona.
It is located on a narrow plot between Còrsega and Sardenya streets, adjacent to the corner but without access to the block patio.
This almost residual condition in the Eixample fabric led the architects to propose a façade that was as transparent as possible, connecting the houses as much as possible with the Mediterranean climate of Barcelona, while at the same time protecting it from the sun and from a street with a lot of motor traffic.
The architects’ references at first were the facades with lattice systems and brise soleil from some local projects by architects such as Mitjans, Coderch, or Bofill, but they were immediately fascinated by the simplicity of the rear facades of the Eixample, with an apparent non-design, practicality, and beauty.
The project explores the potential of these nineteenth-century façades of the Eixample block patios, with glazed galleries protected by simple wooden roller shutters which, when opened, form continuous balconies along the entire façade.
The designers have adopted this Mediterranean shading system with a bespoke design of motorized standard pine shutters mounted on folding aluminum carpentry.
By using commercial wood blinds they ensure that they can be easily and inexpensively repaired or replaced.
The aluminum windows here also go from floor to ceiling to achieve a feeling of maximum openness in the summer and winter gardens, with polished concrete floors and exposed concrete slab ceilings.
The ground floor has two pass-through duplexes with a rear garden, protected from the street by sliding pine lattices.
The upper body can be fully opened to achieve privacy and an overhead light effect that the architects believe adds great value to homes that normally have poor living conditions.
This Mediterranean façade protection system using wooden shutters manages to bring coolness in Barcelona’s hot summers and a large amount of light and a greenhouse effect in its mild winters, in a friendly, simple, and highly effective way.
Project: Sardenya 356 Apartments
Architects: Atienza Maure Arquitectos
Lead Architects: Alonso Atienza Sánchez and Miguel Ángel Maure Blesa
Architecture Intern: Pablo Hernando
Landscape Architects: Camp Rubí
Client: GIAG
Photographer: Lorenzo Zandri
