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From the possibility of participating in a university architecture competition to making a housing prototype a reality, rehabilitating the Agramunt Civil Guard barracks. This is the milestone that a team of 30 students from different courses at the Vallès Higher Technical School of Architecture (ETSAV) of the UPC have promoted with VIBRA, a project to fill this space with life again and use it for housing and social services. .
The COVID-19 pandemic canceled the edition of Solar Decathlon 2023, the international architecture competition that challenges university teams to create prototypes of sustainable houses. An ETSAV team was selected to participate, but with the pandemic they had to look for alternatives to take advantage of the motivation and ideas that had pushed them to take part in the contest. This alternative involved searching for towns in the Urgell region with some social project in the portfolio. And Agramunt was the chosen municipality. The old Civil Guard sign was an ideal space to rehabilitate and give it a new use for people with functional diversity after 20 years without housing any services and after ten years of municipal ownership.
This explains one of the students who participated, Aina Gea, who emphasizes that VIBRA has continued “a unique possibility to be able to develop architecture under its own values and criteria.” In fact, the team was able to decide how to organize it, distribute the work, and choose the materials and processes to make this rehabilitation a reality. “No student would have been able to do this in the workplace within an office,” Gea emphasizes. “VIBRA has allowed us to take responsibility and know all the stages of the process because, in addition to designing it, we have acted as builders, and also as pallets,” adds the student. And, for example, the most attractive part of the project took place this past summer, when the team members traveled to the municipality to do a good part of the construction work.
For the reconditioning project of the old barracks, the original structure has been used and the previous one has been rehabilitated with sustainability and energy efficiency criteria. As another of the students involved, Aroa López, explains, “they have been made with reused material, as is the case of the insulation of the cover, which has been developed with recovered cotton.” For Gea it has been interesting to take advantage of the structure, repair what is necessary and work to make the building more efficient and reduce thermal demand. According to López, thermal and behavioral analyzes have been carried out to be able to make the right decisions with the design and materials of the project.
“We have not reached Passivhaus criteria,” according to Gea, but he explains that we have worked with materials such as wood for the windows and internal distribution, polycarbonate for the impermeability of the façade, and earth elements to transmit and maintain the heat. "In addition, the outdoor space has also been worked on, with a system to store water to water the plants on the plot and generate a more pleasant and fresh environment."
At the time of designing the space, López explains that the fact that the final use is for people with some type of disability did not have to condition them, therefore, they worked prioritizing the comfort of the space as in most projects. .
The project has been developed within the framework of the optional subject of “Local Action” of ETSAV. Gea explains that VIBRA has made her grow “as a person and as an architect.” Leaving the classroom, working with classmates from other courses, talking about merchants, the media, city councils... “it has been a very enriching experience,” says the student. Aroa López, another of the students who led the project, also sees it this way, who believes that these types of initiatives allow them to contact other students and learn many aspects that they had not covered in the classroom. “We have seen everything we put on paper on a 1-1 scale,” says López. “A change is not seen so easily.”
At the moment, the work of the VIBRA team is already a prototype and now it is necessary to finish closing the project so that it can be a cabin and come into operation. The barracks has a thousand square meters distributed over three floors. And despite having planned the entire building, the work - so far - has only been done on half of one level. When there is budget availability, the use of these apartments, managed by the Alba Association, which cares for people at risk of exclusion, will be considered to make a reality. Now, the ground floor of the building will also house the local police offices and spaces for social services. It is expected that within two to three months it will be a reality.
