Tailor Made

A pharmaceutical company based in Sant Cugat wanted a project to connect diferent buildings together through their respective lower levels, in an attempt to transform this space into a Hall, a Foyer and an Auditorium. In architecture you often hear that an empty space should be defined by what’s built in it, nothing more, nothing less. The empty space was there, already built, naked… and the team became tailors instead of architects. From the measurements of the naked body (waistline, hips, the way the shoulders fall down) a tailor reimagines the body in fabrics. Rediscovering it through imagination and covering it with tangible shapes, all in the same effort. With this attitude the curved facade was redrawn as clean as possible to turn it into a gesture that runs from one end to the other. The installations in the patio, like misplaced scraps of cloth, were removed to make a yoke out of it, like a frame that fits over the shoulders and neck of someone. All the different concrete pillars were dressed with tailor-made pieces that remind us of Alvar Aaltos’ clean and ample spaces in his big universities. The ceilings were bulged up with a mantle of catalan-style vaults to connect everything coherently with the pillars. The wood walls were curved, making way for people to flow around them like wind on a dress that falls free, top to bottom. Last but not least, blue; a big curtain in the background to act as a petticoat.