[ Cadaval & Sola-Morales ] Barcelona's Royal Palace

A competition was set up to rehabilitate the Ground Floor of this emblematic Palace in the outskirts of the city. The Palace was constructed as the local residence for the Kings of Spain during 1929'World's Exhibition in Barcelona, and stayed as their local habitation in the city until it was trespassed to the local government a few years ago. It was build under an eclectically thinking, where set designers were put to design individually each room; it was partially transformed during the 50's, without a general agenda, but following the idea that more expensive materials made better places.

So the overall proposal was to clean up all the cartoonish elements with no historical value, and show what architecture can say. The neoclassical scheme of the building has the charisma required and can easily be adapted to the institutional use that the local government wants to implement to the building.

The proposal defines several areas that will programmatically work as an ensemble, and that can spatially be related to each other. All over, the intervention removes all the possible tapestries and odd paintings around the Palace, and keeps the few valuable features to enrich key spaces; but in order to give continuity to the ensemble of rooms, similar design strategies are applied to all these spaces: continuous lighting or ceiling, interventions on the connection points, or contemporary art pieces are the few elements that are over imposed to the nude architectural structure. The project wants to brush out unnecessary over-design applied over the years, and let the place be want needs to be: a neutral and yet elegant envelope to house institutional functions.


form  ca-so