Heavy: > 125 kg/m2

In this building by Stump & Schibli Architekten we want to highlight the wisdom of solving the blind area with continuous horizontal stripes along the façades, while the treatment of the openings is adapted to varying conditions in the courtyard façades and the more urban ones. 

The MACBA, the Film Library and now the new Massana school building: all of these are large public buildings inserted into a dense, small-grain urban structure. In the case of the Massana school, the strategy was to break down the volume into two bodies that do not even seem to be part of the same building, justifying the great hall.

This façade is not watertight and it is not airtight. Depending on the density and size of the stones, it protects against direct sun radiation but without managing the visual relationship with the outside. It considerably blocks the entry of light, gives privacy and protects from intrusion. If it is true that, together with a drained cavity, it would constitute a watertight envelope, but it seems that this is not the case here.

From Ircam to Saint Giles, Piano offers a range of proposals for closing the façade with prefabricated panels finished with ceramic pieces. It is interesting to see how these initial concerns and approaches accompany him throughout his career: prefabricating the use of small-format ceramic pieces.

The building for a student’s residence at the South Diagonal Universities Campus uses two different façade systems: the first, ETICS, solves water tightness thanks to the impermeability of the rendering; the second, rain screen, uses an open-joint outer sheet and a drainage cavity for this same purpose.

This building, and its façade, could easily go unnoticed. It is appropriate, but not boastful.

However, we wanted to draw attention to a very specific, educational aspect. Even though the two façade systems that are used are formed by two sheets with a cavity in the middle, their behaviour is very different. 
The outer layer made of flat plates with open vertical joints allows air and water to enter and exit the cavity through the joints. This is a ventilated and drained façade. 

Energy-efficient architecture does not have to have a certain image. This is clear in the work of Sauerbruch & Hutton, which has a sober but colourful image.

This is an excellent proposal for solving façade composition with a rectangular format checkerboard pattern (the blind and hollowed areas only touch at the apex), avoiding the presence of the slab.

Those who have faced this situation will know how difficult it is to unite at a vertex two openings on different floors, separated by a slab, without showing the thickness of this structural element.

Plaza de la Garduña, in the Raval neighbourhood of Barcelona, is characterized by the uniqueness of the buildings that surround it and give it life: the new Massana School, the Boquería market and the old hospital. Among them, the residential building on the north side of the square responds to this uniqueness with sober neutrality. The building occupies the corner that connects the square with Dr. Fleming’s gardens.

There is no easy project, but it is particularly challenging to refurbish a residential building of this size in which, over the years, each occupant has modified their terrace individually. Here the architects solved the challenge with a few well-placed interventions.