LA SECA REHABILITATION

The Royal Mint of the Aragon Crown in Barcelona “La Seca” – from the Arabic word sekka: “place where currency is manufactured” – ran from 1441 to 1849 and was located in several buildings grouped on a single block of houses in the Ribera district of Barcelona.

Vestiges of 13th and 14th centuries have been preserved in the complex even though the main structures are from 17th century, with important alterations during 18th and 19th centuries.

When the factory fell into disuse the building suffered againmultiple modi cations and was segregated into multiple properties.
The rehabilitation of part of these buildings that formed La Seca has been carried out in several phases to host the Brossa Foundation on the one side and the Espai Escènic Brossa on the other, provisionally maintaining its differentiated uses to become a single cultural center in the future.

For this reason, the last interventions have been focused at creating access points and connections between both buildings.The fit of these cultural facilities in the existing historical buildings has been considered keeping the main types, structures and constructive elements and respecting the interventions it has suffered over time, without prioritizing any of them, and completing them with the construction of newspeci c elements such as a new stair, a bridge or the creation of a new interior patio, so that the final result of the sum of history and contemporaneity allows a good use of the whole.