CRÜ has designed the expansion of La Clara in Barcelona, Spain.

This project is a ground-floor old public laundry facility in the Les Corts neighbourhood of Barcelona and breaks the rectangular shape of the floor plan with a patio through which the most public parts of the dwelling breathe.

A second patio with the same intentions pierces a piece of a colonised volume of the beside plot. La Clara is a resistant expression of the three-dimensional chaotic balance that configures the interior courtyards of Barcelona blocks.

These laundry places were significant on two levels – one deliberate and the other genuinely reactive – functional and social. They materialised as spaces capable of solving the problem of laundering in the cities at the same time as they became the first public spaces of gathering and exclusively for female interaction.

"The materiality is thought from the aesthetics of nudity and the unfinishedness. All existing walls and stairs are undressed to show only the entrails, to recover the stench of soap and gossip," explained CRÜ.

This project has been longlisted in the residential rebirth project category of Dezeen Awards 2022.

Designer: CRÜ

Project: La Clara