Brick wall

The Hotel Constanza is part of the Illa Diagonal complex. Like the main building, the facade is covered with a travertine rain screen. The narrowness of the drainage cavity is striking, but is interrupted by the lack of cleanliness of the insulation surrounding the fixings.

ETICS solutions, which are now so common due to the thermal insulation continuity they allow, were already used twenty-five years ago in designs such as the MACBA building. At that time, achieving continuous rendering without joints was not that simple, as the rendering materials were not as good as the ones we use today.

Lightweight solutions for the rainscreen outer layer were barely known. Probably because the architects did not trust this solution, the inner wall was completely covered with a watertight membrane.

This could not be more adequate.

It is wise in the decision of being discreet, and acute in the selection of all systems and materials. The expertise of the architects as constructors is shown in the accurate design of all the points of relation between the systems and elements.

In the façade solution of this building we want to draw attention to two factors:

The building for a student’s residence at the South Diagonal Universities Campus uses two different façade systems: the first, ETICS, solves water tightness thanks to the impermeability of the rendering; the second, rain screen, uses an open-joint outer sheet and a drainage cavity for this same purpose.

This building, and its façade, could easily go unnoticed. It is appropriate, but not boastful.

However, we wanted to draw attention to a very specific, educational aspect. Even though the two façade systems that are used are formed by two sheets with a cavity in the middle, their behaviour is very different. 
The outer layer made of flat plates with open vertical joints allows air and water to enter and exit the cavity through the joints. This is a ventilated and drained façade. 

This is an excellent proposal for solving façade composition with a rectangular format checkerboard pattern (the blind and hollowed areas only touch at the apex), avoiding the presence of the slab.

Those who have faced this situation will know how difficult it is to unite at a vertex two openings on different floors, separated by a slab, without showing the thickness of this structural element.

Plaza de la Garduña, in the Raval neighbourhood of Barcelona, is characterized by the uniqueness of the buildings that surround it and give it life: the new Massana School, the Boquería market and the old hospital. Among them, the residential building on the north side of the square responds to this uniqueness with sober neutrality. The building occupies the corner that connects the square with Dr. Fleming’s gardens.

There is no easy project, but it is particularly challenging to refurbish a residential building of this size in which, over the years, each occupant has modified their terrace individually. Here the architects solved the challenge with a few well-placed interventions.

What is hidden behind this ceramic tile cladding in the form of bricks? A thermal insulation material fixed over a real brick wall. Far from trying to cheat us, the cladding reveals the fact that it is not even self-bearing through peculiar “rigging”. The ETICS façade systems allow many other finishing materials in addition to renderings.