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From the possibility of participating in a university architecture competition to realizing a housing prototype while rehabilitating the Agramunt Civil Guard barracks. This is the feat that a team of 30 students from different courses of the Escola Técnica Superior d'Arquitectura del Vallès (ETSAV) of the UPC has carried out with VIBRA, a project to fill this space with life again and allocate it housing and social services.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the Solar Decathlon 2023 edition, the international architecture competition that challenges university teams to create sustainable house prototypes. A team from the ETSAV had been selected to participate but with the pandemic had to look for alternatives to take advantage of the motivation and ideas that had pushed them to take part in the competition. This alternative was to look for towns in Urgell with some social project in the portfolio. And Agramunt was the chosen municipality. The former barracks of the Civil Guard was an ideal space to rehabilitate and give it a new use for people with functional diversity after 20 years without hosting any services and after 10 years of municipal ownership.
This is how one of the students who participated, Aina Gea, explains it, who emphasizes that VIBRA was "a unique possibility to be able to develop an architecture under its own values and criteria". In fact, the team was able to decide how to organize itself, 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 in an office", emphasizes Gea. "VIBRA has allowed us to take responsibility and know all the stages of the process because, in addition to designing it, we have been builders, and also masons", adds the student. And it is that, for example, the most spectacular part of the project was carried out this past summer, when the members of the team traveled to the municipality to do a good part of the construction work.
For the renovation project of the old barracks, the original structure has been used and the interior has been rehabilitated with criteria of sustainability and energy efficiency. As another of the students involved, Aroa López, explains, materials close to nature have been used and part of the interventions, for example, have been made with reused material, as is the case of the roof insulation , which has been carried out with recycled 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. As López explains, thermal and behavioral analyzes have been carried out to be able to make the right decisions in the design and materials of the project.
"We have not reached Passivhaus criteria", according to Gea, but he explains that he has worked with materials such as wood for the windows and internal distribution, polycarbonate for the waterproofing of the facade, and floor elements to transmit and keep warm. In addition, the outside 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 atmosphere".
When thinking about 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 on it by prioritizing the comfort of the space as in most projects.
The project was carried out as part of the optional subject 'Local Action' of the ETSAV. Gea explains that VIBRA has made her grow "as a person and as an architect". Leaving the classroom, working with colleagues from other courses, talking to traders, the media, town councils... "it has been a very enriching experience", says the student. This is also the view of Aroa López, another of the students who led the project, who believes that this type of initiative allows them to contact other students and learn many aspects that they had not dealt with in the classroom. "We have seen everything we put on paper at scale 1.1", says López, "and a change of scale is not so easily seen".
At the moment, the work of the VIBRA team is already a prototype and now we need to finish closing the project so that it can be habitable and go into operation. The barracks has 1,000 square meters distributed over three floors, and despite having designed the entire building, the action - for now - has only been done on half of one level. When there is budgetary availability, it will be completed to realize the use of these flats, managed by the Alba Association, which serves people at risk of exclusion. At the same time, the ground floor of the building will also house the offices of the local police and spaces for social services. It is expected that within two to three years this could already be a reality.
