A Promenade through two halves

The area of the Boné Passage conforms an urban fragment of interest and landscape singularity that has survived over time where a group of irregular passages, as well as architectures of a spontaneous growth from the beginning of the 20th century contrast with the image of the dense and compact modern urban planning.

By the time the Eixample’s grid was finally extended up to the neighborhood changing all its parceling, the extension of the Lepant Street cut in two halves like a knife the passages and its constructions and over, the years, new high density building began to surround the area. The image that it is seen today when we come in to these passages consists in a picture of small villages of tiny houses with inner gardens in interior blocks where the ghosts of the great modern constructions emerge around them. A few years ago, the city council started a process of tearing down the old constructions of half of the area of the passages that are placed in one of the interiors blocks. The process was stopped due to complaints of the neighborhood and since the pandemic has been frozen leaving only the base wall foundation of the pre-exiting buildings. As a result of a work of analysis and research about the urban historical development of the area, the first and main decision of the project is to expand the scope of action to incorporate also the Sant Pere Passage, recognizing and recovering an historical trace of this place as a landscape unity that existed and today remains blurred in the two interior blocs. The renewed urban scene tries to pay attention to the different particular situations of its condition base on the irregular geometry and the public space acts as the common thread of the whole proposal linking the two interior blocks., which are separated by the Lepant Street. Additionally, there is also a will of reusing materials by rebuilding the urban space with the rubble of the teared down old constructions that has already started in a part of the area which once defined these traces, as well as finding new uses for some of the pre-existing building with the goal of raise the activity in the site. The new uses proposed respond to variations of the collective and social housing which organization and typology changes depending on the specific conditions of each piece, merging in terms of materiality and composition with the architectures that are preserved becoming an unitarian urban scene.