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Architects: VORA, El GLOBUS VERMELL
Typology: Artistic Centre
Location: Barcelona
Construction Date: 2018-2019
Photos by: Adrià Goula
The Nau Ivanow is an artistic centre focused on scenic arts. It is placed in a former industrial area, near the train tracks. The building was built in 1967 for a paint factory. Since 1997 it has been operating as an artistic centre and cultural dynamizer of the neighbourhood, since 2010 within the creation factories program of the culture institute of Barcelona. It has a theatre on the ground floor, and creation and rehearsal spaces on the upper floors.
The refurbishment was commissioned to adapt the building to present regulations, mainly compliance of fire evacuation. The little transformations have been made so that the performance of the building is also improved.
In relation to the theatre space, the transformation brings a new dressing room and new spaces for technical control and storage. In relation to the vertical communications, the staircase is placed in the same position, but wider and reversed to better open up to the entrance door. All the toilet spaces around the staircase and the (preexisting) forklift are reorganized.
The construction seeks to express itself on a material level,
distinguishing itself from the existing plastered surfaces. This
materiality, based on brick fabric, links to some external walls
of the building. A bit of that outward expression is brought
to the heart of the building. The construction is very basic,
bare. The preexisting walls that have been embraced by the transformation express, through traces and under a unifying layer of white paint, the memory of the original staircase walls.