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Retirement Home of Santa Tereseta

This is a project by B més R 29 Arquitectes and it is located at Lleida, Segrià, Spain. Project's program: Reform and expansion of an existing retirement home. There are twenty five images for Retirement Home of Santa Tereseta.

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Project details

Project name: Retirement Home of Santa Tereseta
Location: Lleida, Segrià, Spain
Program: Reform and expansion of an existing retirement home
Area: Project Area: 1107,31 m2
Year: Project Year: 2008 • Construction: 2009
More details: Budget: 1,400,000 €
Client: Lleida City Council
Project by: B més R 29 Arquitectes
Team: Principal Designers: Xavier F. Rodríguez i Padilla, Josep Mª Burgués i Solanes • Collaborating Architects: Ramon Rosinach Garriga, Mariona Julià Fabrelles • Collaborator: Cristina Cruz Gómez
Others: Builder: Construccions Pallàs

Project images

Designer's statement

Reform and Expansion of an existing retirement home, located in one corner of an equipment zone between the streets Pica d'Estats, Bisbe Irurita, Magí i Morera and Antonio Bergós Masso. The building is extended in its lateral contact, with ground floor and first floor, more an architectural sealing element that complements the communications center and access.

The existing building is an isolated volume of ground floor plus three floors, set to the westward with continuous facade on street Pica d'Estats. This volume was built as an element marking the north-east corner of the equipment zone, but it did not come in contact with adjacent equipment to street Pica d'Estats. The functional needs of the program required an extension of the new equipment that almost doubled the existing area and needed to understand new construction as one equipment with a continued flow of users that does not distinguish the new volume of expansion of the program's initial retirement home.

The complex volumetry and functional needs, made it a very complicated intervention, we had three problems to solve with a single gesture. The initial building, due to its complex volumetry in a small size made it difficult to raise an expansion that didn’t add new aesthetic and material criteria. The need of floor built area did not allow to stay away from adjacent equipment without leaving residual spaces between them. Finally, integrating the expansion into the existing building and giving continuity to the whole program without adding additional volumetric complexity and ensuring the correct function of the resulting retirement house.

Analyzing all these parameters, we proposed a project where the base volume of expansion works off the aesthetic criteria of the existing construction giving continuity to the building, but not affecting its special shape. Also, the building needed an element that integrated the entire project as one. Thus, arose a protective outer solar system in the form of vertical aluminum louvers that solved the old problem of intrusion — of the original building — and allowed the whole project to seen as as a single volume, that responded to the functional needs, aesthetics and changing environment. These protections also produce a very special light in the interiors and continuous neutral floors that unify the image inside the home and give prominence to the different filtered light from the outside.