The Emperor's New Clothes
Beto Clote, Jep Sayós and Lucca Maia, ETSAV 2018-19
Tutors: Pere Buil and Sergi Garriga
The following text comprises extracts from the student commentary.
Photograph of the building from its first phase of life, the SEAT offices and showroom.
The course title for this semester, "The Emperor’s New Clothes", proposes a hypothetical reconversion of a building set in Barcelona. It was designed in 1950 by Ortiz-Echague for the Spanish automobile brand ''Seat''. It was composed of three buildings, the central offices or ‘Tower Building’, a five story car parking ‘Warehouse’ and a connecting ‘Showroom‘.
Over time this building lost importance and finally in 1997 the offices and the car parks were converted into housing. The idea of the project was to return the old use of the set, so a search for a brand that could be adapted to the spaces and spirit of the building began.
Juxtoposition of historical photograph of the SEAT building and it’s current condition.
Proposal model showing the reinstatement of the vertical character of the Tower Building and the ‘curtain wall’ facades of the Warehouse Building.
The choice of a new use as HQ for the brand Balenciaga allows us to explore the crossover of languages of the Modern Movement with haute couture and Balenciagas modernity. The project is conceived as a radical exposition of the constituent elements of the building in order to emphasize them and show once again the values of the modern architecture language.
Proposed elevations.
This search for recovery of the language and at the same time expression of the brand's own personality appear on the facades, which are simultaneously upgraded to meet contemporary energy performance standards. They are presented as an exaltation and even exaggeration of the virtues that the project had; the opacity-transparency dialectical component, the stylized forms, the shadow games, contrasts, overlaps and the order defined by the structure.
Detail model.
Detail model.
Axonometric view showing additional facade elements added to the tower building.
Interior view