The building is located on a very difficult site in the heart of the Raval district. It respects the alignments on Sant Pau and Espalter Streets and opens onto a newly created adjacent square.
Its program consists of the Filmoteca de Catalunya’s buildings, which require a considerable public area and a more private one that houses offices, an image bank and a library. The public parts are in contact with the ground. The two cinemas where the films are shown are underground, under the square, to avoid large vertical displacements of the public. The most private program takes up the upper floors of the building.
The structure is the most special feature of the intervention: two screens of post-tensioned concrete configure the long façades of the building and are more than visible. The horizontal structure goes from façade to façade without intermediate supports. The screens leave two large, cantilevered bodies at each end of the building that cover public spaces without any kind of support, well tensioned and very attractive.
An interior atrium connects the public and private parts of the program and crosses the entire heart of the building from top to bottom.
The interior design contrasts, due to the delicacy it presents, with the structure in a very strong way. It is based on interior glass partitions, light and transparent, dyed in soft colors, which introduce a subtle note in powerful, balanced, diaphanous and spacious spaces. The structure is also visible inside and introduces a mass of material that will patina and age differently in the partitions.
The pavement of the public spaces on the ground floor is remarkable, made of small cobblestones arranged in a herringbone pattern, following the Portuguese style.
The public areas will be visitable on screening days. The building is called to be one of the backbone spaces of the neighbourhood given that, due to the uniqueness of the films exhibited there, it mixes the local public with that of the rest of Barcelona and its metropolitan area.

Filmoteca de Catalunya
About the Form... The ruins show the structure of the buildings. The Roman Forum visualises the foundation plan and city sewers.

In the old city, my building aims to express itself as a pure structure, without cladding or finishes.
The exposed concrete beam walls that make up the façades, which are very different, belong to the scrapped neighbouring walls, which show through their eaves their original central mass.
Filters are juxtaposed on the wall. It is a cinematic metaphor but not only conceptual; above all, it is physical, sensitive.
In the old city, with very close relationships between buildings, the interaction must be mediated, filtered. And this occurs through various artifacts, with a vague cinematic reference.

About the space... The space is structured around two movements:

a) The descent into the darkness of the cinemas, with the reflection of the spectators (in turn reflected, actors through of a set of mirrors).

b) The ascent towards the light, towards the workplaces.

Two courtyards connected but not continuous accompany and build the movement.