The environs of the Born Market

The market building, which contains a huge piece of the medieval city that was destroyed in 1714, has reopened its doors as a historic-cultural facility. A re-opening that, at an urban level, offers an enormous new covered public space, almost like a porch, framed by a unified architectural backdrop, the Fontserè porches. The paving is an element of connection with the history and memory of the place. The final result permits a reading on two levels. On the one hand the reading of the distant memory: the definition of the layout of the medieval streets through subtle changes in the cobblestones and the reproduction of the location of built elements uncovered during the excavations. At the other level, the materiality is linked to the more recent memory of the place. Its use as a market within the continuity of the unified character of Fontserè’s nineteenth-century operation. The continuous granite cobblestone paving identifies the intervention and makes a sensory connection with the collective imagination. A large part of the cobblestones were removed from the existing streets and reused in the same area.

Credits

The environs of the Born Market

Location:
Mercado del Born. Barcelona

Architects:
Vora Arquitectura: Pere Buil y Toni Riba

Project team:
Adrià Guardiet, Miquel Camps, Jordi Riba, Eva Cotman, Ondrej Fabian Mechanical engineering: PCG arquitectura e ingeniería

Area:
14000 m2

Photography:
Adrià Goula

2009-2013