Carles Enrich: Gironella

To mend the urban fabric of a Spanish village separated by a river and by a 20 m vertical drop Carles Enrich builds an elevator surrounded by a tower of perforated bricks.

Carles Enrich, New access to Gironella’s historic centre, Gronella, Barcelona, Spain

Gironella is a municipality that has grown, during the last decades, divided by the river Llobregat. Its historic centre is located on top of a 20 metres high hill on the right bank of the river, while its modern part is placed on the other side of the river.

This 20 metres vertical break between the old and new parts of the town has generated a social fracture.

Carles Enrich’s project involves the insertion of a new access to the historic centre to enhance the urban connectivity between the two parts of the town, boosting the use of the old town and avoiding social exclusion.

The intervention seeks to be integrated respectfully as a new layer in the historical memory of the place, putting an elevator in a strategic point of Cal Metre path, through where people used to get to the textile industries.

The elevator improves the accessibility to the old town but it is also a trigger to recover the use of this ancient river passage offering new urban continuity with the Plaza de la Villa public space. The intention is to dialog with all these pre-existences, enhancing a relation with the textile industries and recognizing the green stratum as a public space. To this end three materials were used: steel, ceramic and glass.

On the steel structure, a ceramic lattice made by holed bricks placed on their side faces covers the 16 upper metres. The choice of this enclosure material responds, on the one hand, to its role as a solar filter offering at the same time porosity, light entrance and ventilation to the elevator case. On the other hand, it dematerializes the case by letting the light go across it provoking an appearance of lightness that contrasts with the opacity that it is shown in a farther point of view.