‘El Rengle’ Building - Retail, offices and services

Mataró, Spain

Photo © Shlomi Almagor

Photo © Ruisánchez Arquitectes

Photo © Ferran Mateo

Photo © Shlomi Almagor

Photo © Ferran Mateo

Photo © Ruisánchez Arquitectes

Architects: Ruisánchez Arquitectes

Location: Carretera de Barcelona (N-II), 37, 08302 Mataró, Spain
Year: 2011

The El Rengle compound is part of a wider operation to redefine the waterfront of the city of Mataró, combining housing and business uses. The planning of the city block -in collaboration with the Municipal Services- interprets this hybrid situation alternating different autonomous volumes among which this building of business activities stands out.

The project proposes a typological alternative to the compact commercial building, by developing a strategy that allows the overlapping of uses and incorporating the upper level exterior space as part of the program of office use.

The building consists of a discontinuous base on top of which lye three office ‘boxes’. These define an elevated plaza, designed as a condenser of the activity of the upper floors.

Seen from this square, the three emerging volumes reveal domestic features of walkways and balconies which perforate the volume with transparencies towards the coast and the city. From the outside, the volumes seem like prisms defined by the visual vibration and color of the mobile solar control louvers.