SITUATION OF THE STARTING POINT. CONDITIONS. Building between party walls with 8 houses and 2 premises. Very suitable for easy and immediate speculation, the typical messy transfer. Demands of the owner of the plot, in addition to the impositions established by the promoter and then, as the last obstacle, the conditions imposed by the builder. Promoter premiere, that is: promoter in a still virgin state. Promoters who are marginal to your business. They take their first steps in the field of real estate speculation before the general ease and disorder prevailing and the possibility of getting rich quickly. Developer-builder association. Construction price fixed a priori, whatever happens and whoever falls. You cannot go beyond so many pesetas per square metre. PROJECT PHASE. CONTRADICTIONS AND HOPES. Total impossibility of exercising substantial program variations to vary the conventional image of the future construction. Impossibility of introducing new hypotheses with a minimum technological process when they are rejected for departing from the traditional systems constantly used and repeated by the builder. Possibility of using a typology already tested in other works of this type that operates, through the form, a process of its own formal-functional and autonomous validity in contradiction with the rest of the established impositions. REALISATION PHASE. THIRD ACT. Project quite prepared to resist the changes with which at the last minute, and at the moment of beginning the works, the builders and promoters surprise, torment and despair us. They establish the changes in a resounding way. No to solid brick. Yes to exposed brick. NO to solid railing, YES to iron railing. NO to curbs. YES to this and NO to that. In these cases, the question arises of whether you agree to continue or not, whether to leave or stay. Starting from establishing a limit, up to which you stay, after which you leave, the process of carrying the work forward arises, including the fundamental points established in the project phase. Used to this type of confrontation, some good results are obtained by acting with an impertinent insistence and a rare ability that goes from the most cynical lie to the provocation of false situations. Once all the necessary positions have been established to obtain a result with a certain interest, the fact remains, valid in itself, of the verification of the result itself, including its contradictions, as the authenticity of a true architectural process.

Rambla de Gavà is between Carrer de Gaudí and the C-245 highway. It is 575 m long and 20 m wide, with some wider sections such as the Jaume Perich and Josep Tarradellas squares. The action consisted of the complete conversion of the promenade into a pedestrian area to enhance its urban qualities, both in use and landscape. Only the streets that cross it maintain vehicle traffic and access to the parking lots located on the promenade has been regulated with stainless steel pylons. The pavement has been unified with a single material, garnet-coloured porphyry of Asian origin, which is related to the historical memory of the Gavà stone. The pavement is medium in size, 20 cm wide, to make it very resistant to compression and bending. In the central walkway, the thickness of the pavement is 6 cm and in its lateral spaces it is 8. We have worked with a topographic section inherent to its character as a boulevard, although eliminating all unevenness to make it completely accessible. With this unitary treatment of the support plane and without obstacles, the promenade takes on new, much larger dimensions and the built urban context is highlighted, as well as the gardens of the Lluc house. The arrangement of the pavement in courses parallel to the axis of the central walk enhances the longitudinal dimension. The characteristic trees of the boulevard, the plane trees, have been maintained, renewing those specimens in poor condition. The furniture and lighting, sober and functional, enhance the spatial qualities of the walk. The lighting columns are made of anodised aluminum. The benches are of the Nu type with and without backrest. For the terraces, new unified furniture has been designed with ecru-colored umbrellas and aluminum chairs and tables, which will contribute significantly to the urban quality and order of the new promenade. In the cross streets, without differences in level with the boulevard, traffic is channeled using cylindrical stainless-steel posts. The action has also included the construction of a new sewer network, fiber optics, and all services have been buried and rebuilt. At the top of the promenade, Plaça de Batista i Roca and Carrer d'Antoni Gaudí have been completely renovated, where an underground car park has been built, allowing the promenade to be freed from its blue zone. The square, fully integrated with the promenade in terms of materials, is a large porphyry plane that allows all types of civic activities; the transition with the perimeters, located at different levels, occurs through green slopes and different stairs. A wall also appears on the border with the Sant Llorenç stream. Both the steps and the wall are finished in porphyry and the shear cut on the visible side of the stone of the wall stands out.