At the outskirts of Dali’s hometown, Figueres, Vilafant, with its 5.500 inhabitants has more than doubled its population since the ‘90. It has grown in the fashion of 4 satellite urbanizations that are more populated than the village centre itself. This has led to certain lack of feeling of pertinence and engagement the village. A vibrant equipped centre is needed to gather and build up community. Among the first municipal actions to reverse this situation, is the renovation of the Sant Cebrià.
The site’s project is the backyard of the church. An inaccessible space surrounded by walls. For generations, the church backyard and its derelict existing building, was an important kids and youngsters gathering space, as it was the home of the boy-scouts and others movements. So, even if the courtyard have been closed and neglected for years, it still has a special space in the memory of many locals.
The goal of the project is to renew the backyard into an open ‘garden-plaza’ as the first move to reclaim the village’s centre as a relevant social node. Half-garden, half-square the place is a hybrid space: half sunny, half shaded, indoor and outdoor, … The existing building has been restored as a pavilion open to the plaza. It has restrooms, a bar area and multiple storage places for unexpected uses. The dichotomy between inside and outside disappears when the paving blends into the pavilion. Meticulous craftsmanship and the use of brick as mono-material, it fosters a general sense of unity and readability.
In 2022, the project has been awarded as Girona’s Province best project in the category of ‘Public space’ by the Architects Association with this jury’s comments:
The jury awards the distinction for the “design that integrates all the parts of the surrounding environment and that does not erase a previous condition of ‘field’, building a versatile space for good citizen use. The pavement, with the use of a single material, the brick, easily adapts to the site’s topography. The floor, surprisingly, thickens at various points, like a superimposed layer with a certain sculptural vocation”.
Sant Cebrià garden-plaza, it is an example of a modest project in a small village that through craftsmanship, care and attention to detail pretends to act as a catalyst for a new affection for the village’s centre revitalisation. At the same time it offers room for indoor-outdoor informal, civic and cultural expression, it aims to be iconic piece of work that becomes a flagship of the recovery of the village’s centre as a renewed cultural and identity hub.
In design terms, a big effort was made to ‘blurring the limits’ of an originally isolated and enclosed space. Both in the plan and cross sections, all are curved lines that lead the make vague the site’s limits. A pergola that blends like a wok and opens to the sky while sheltering a small pavilion, an arrow-curved paving that reinforces the project’s new topography while blurring the square shape of the backyard, curved stairs the open 90 degrees…
There is too a clear bet for craftsmanship and mono-materiality, having chosen km.0 brick and a very skilled local company for its construction. Both at conceptual and construction stage, significant research was made to explore the limits of working with clay-brick as a carpet in all its potential. At the same time we looked at the work of masters as Aalto or Lewerentz we did many trails on how to play with texture, shade and moisture. In each peculiar corner of the backyard we propose an ‘ad hoc’ design solution to celebrate its site specificity and its micro-topography: a floating bench, an excavated amphitheatre, a trap to capture moisture in between the bricks and prompt moss growth, joints to let strips of vegetation and infiltrate water, etc… Overall a micro-topography sculpture that welcomes and arrange an open range of forms of appropriation with an iconic clear reading.
Architecture offices involved in the design: Diedric
Location: Esglèsia de Sant Cebrià, 17740 Vilafant
Design year: 2018
Year Completed: 2020
