Maragall 310 is a set of thirteen low income dwellings located in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Barcelona city centre.

The Nou Barris expansion zone is made up mainly of buildings with facebrick walling featuring a wide variety of geometries and shapes. This is dominated by the formation of flying parts, mainly closed volumes, showing volumetric use of an alternating pattern of full and empty spaces that make up an angled and uneven skyline. The starting point of the project is to work from the integration with the neighbourhood’s architectural identity and its formal reinterpretation.

The porticoed façade of the building absorbs these realities by creating a single volume that is broken up at the point it meets the detached houses. Inside, the facebrick skin extends the material language of the surrounding area and separates off from the structure to generate a gallery that offers a transition space between the inside and the outside. This space flows in this counterposition between high quality materials that give it a classic order and popular material that creates dialogue with the pieces around it. The “in situ” concrete structure is relegated to the foreground, thereby making it the main façade. This creates a diaphanous floor that is completely free of columns along with a central core for vertical communication that articulates access to the three homes on each floor. 

On its westerly façade, the two skins separate off to create a porticoed gallery that filters the sun’s rays and generates a lath house opposite the housing. In the warm months, users of these dwellings can therefore benefit from a pleasant indoor temperature and an outdoor space to provide shade in the open air.

In terms of sustainability, the building is fitted with various renewable energy sources that reduce electricity, gas and water consumption. In addition to producing energy using an aerothermics system, the building has alternative heat sources such as biomass boilers and a low temperature radiating system for the few cold months.

Due to the neighbourhood’s severe lack of plots and its steep incline, spacious flats with lifts have not been built here. In the light of these circumstances, all these dwellings are accessible and there is a fully accessible and adapted dwelling on the ground floor.