The commission consisted of the refurbishment of a 200 m2 commercial establishment located on the ground floor of a late 19th century building in Barcelona's Eixample, a premises that had undergone various interventions that had masked its character. On the other hand, the place will be used for Bar-Hamburger Restaurant, open from 9:00 am to 24:00 pm, and compatible with the different service time slots; breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks.
The main strategy was to recover what was considered essential: to perceive the spaciousness of the premises and enhance its industrial character by recovering its characteristic materiality. The intensification of material memory is not at all nostalgic or romantic, but an unprejudiced and integrative attitude was chosen that did not discriminate between this or that, but instead opted for this and that; in this way, certain layers of a past were updated that coexist with other added layers, avoiding the relationship by contrast (the new versus the old) or integrative (the new subject to the old).
The different areas that make up the uses of the bar were defined based on the specificity of the furniture and lighting, in a linear sequence of uses of 25 metres in length that begins with the outdoor-covered space of the bar entrance, until you reach the kitchen.
The project and construction process were extremely fast (three months in total) and, together with strong economic constraints (320 € / m2), made a clear and determined strategy essential: DIY. This has made it possible to operate in an open sequence, where errors and work modifications were incorporated into the result in an action-reaction process and where coexistence between various contradictions appears as an added value. An attitude without prejudice that operates with a hybrid technique capable of dealing with materials and techniques from different sources, whether physical or temporary.
