Mercat Muntanyeta
More natural lighting and showiness for the building of the municipal market of La Muntanyeta in Sant Boi de Llobregat (Barcelona).
The building done by the architect Valentí Álvarez Planas (ARQUITACTÚA), defines the comprehensive refurbishment in order to modernize it to boost its activity through the expansion of spaces and uses, redistribution of the trade routes, the improvement of all its facilities and a radical and total change of the interior and exterior image.
Regarding spaces and uses, the reform contemplates the enlargement of the building volume in an area attached to the supermarket with the purpose of installing a new logistic area and thus free up space existing in order to expand the sales room. It’s also envisaged the redistribution of the rest of the building surface occupied by the market in order to free up remaining spaces, and thus be able to relocate the National Police and offer in addition to a new area destined to commercial local, both of them with independent access from the square.
The new distributions raised are adapted to the maximum to the rigid original layout in diagonal of some stands that were not finally object of the reform.
For the redistribution of the uses it has been taken in to account its relationship of these with the outside (square and the commercial axis of the city), enhancing the circulations and the main visuals through the replacement of the opaque system of concrete prefabricated panels that originally composed the facade, by another completely glazing system with the intention of establish a greater transparency and visual communication between the inside and the outside.
All this set of new glazed areas realized with Technal Geode curtain wall, is formally framed through a canopy of 2.5 m. width coated by aluminum and located at medium height of the facade, and that rises up to the summit in the corner next to the square, showing that point as the main access to the market.
The rest of facade remains opaque, but its appearance is completely changed with the cladding of the prefabricated panels of concrete through folded and perforated sheet of galvanized steel, of variable rhythm and lacquered with many colors relating to the colorful existing on the mountain, right below which the refurbished building is located.