The factories that used to populate Barcelona and that remain standing not only resist dying but are put in relief, updated, converted to adapt to the new times. They are no longer dedicated to manufacturing things, but they do maintain activity, in many cases economically. This is the case of one of those owned by Gràcia, on Carrer Milà i Fontanals, from 1848, which in its day produced fishing threads and silk. After the textile crisis, in the middle of the last century, it housed small workshops of all kinds and, finally, from the nineties until today, offices, which have led to a comprehensive rehabilitation that has lasted ten years and has just been completed . The complex, which includes commercial premises on the ground floor, is called Fabrick and has received an investment of more than three million euros. The facilities host around fifty companies.
"The land has been in our family since 1812. Here there was a small farmhouse and then the factory", explains Javier Julià, owner of Fabrick together with his brothers Alicia and Mauricio. "For us - he continues - it is important to rescue the heritage, bring it up to date and make it possible for the next generations to come across buildings that have a history and are still active". In this case, the appeal of working in a place where you can breathe the industrial past has attracted creative professionals for years, from publishers to advertising agencies, architecture studios, graphic design and even artists. But also other sectors such as lawyers, laboratories and various sectoral clusters, among others.
The facade, which has just been renovated, has put the finishing touches to the rehabilitation of the old factory, which began in 2013 with the phased reform of the interior spaces. Elements of the industrial past are kept there, with large, bright spaces without columns, arranged in offices of different sizes, from 35 square meters in the smallest to 600 in the largest, which can be customized and rented, with or without furniture. "There are companies that started in small spaces and have grown with us", says Alicia Julià. The renovated building has about 4,000 square meters.
The change on the outside of the building is noticeable. Updating the facade involved an investment of half a million euros. The air conditioning and wiring boxes that it had have been removed, the windows, which are now wooden – previously they were installed in aluminum – have been ordered and profiled, and the walls have been painted with a hand stuccoed in an eye-catching terracotta color. Nothing to do with what was there before, with a chaotic and degraded appearance.
We like those whose shop windows are always in view, who don't lower the blinds at night, who bring life to the neighbourhood", adds the co-owner. There are eight in total, on the ground floor of the building and others adjacent to Monistrol and Santa Eulàlia streets.
The project will be completed later with the rehabilitation of another building, a little smaller, located on the same island, with an entrance on Santa Eulàlia Street, of around 3,000 square meters, where the same model will be followed. It will be the Fabrick Gràcia 2. But the idea does not end there. The intention of the owners is to replicate this kind of action in old industrial properties in other neighborhoods (in Sants, in les Corts, in 22@...) for which they are looking for assets to buy and rehabilitate.
