Plaça Major
Public space: heritage, housing, and urban life. Olot, 2024
With Clàudia Calvet, Pep de Solà-Morales i Quim Domene
The Plaça Major of Olot is both the geographical and symbolic heart of the city. It is surrounded by four rows of buildings that were renovated between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. These are simple houses, which take on value as a whole, due to the repetition of patterns of composition, construction and decoration, sharing similar patterns of composition, construction, and decoration. Before the intervention, most buildings had structural and constructive pathologies, with one-third of the residences standing empty and requiring significant renovations to be habitable. In this way, the square serves as a reflection about the architecture and challenges facing the city’s old quarter.
This project is part of the Pla de Places i Placetes (The Plan for Squares) of Olot’s historic center, recognizing that revitalizing public space requires the activation of its surrounding edges. In essence, the square is not just an open space but the buildings and the people who inhabit them. Thus, this project aims to regenerate this space through three key actions: highlighting heritage and strengthening the self-esteem of neighbours, rehabilitating façades to improve building conditions, and reactivating vacant homes. A preliminary diagnosis, based on data mapping and conversations with residents and shopkeepers, led to discarding a conventional urbanization project to allocate the same amount to the façades and roofs of the buildings.
Rather than a complete reurbanization, a set of agreed-upon public space repairs was carried out, including replacing broken pavement slabs and establishing an underground municipal utilities network. Meanwhile, a broader strategy was launched to fully repopulate the residential units, including a rehabilitation project, an urban improvement plan, and a program of conditional grants.
The facade rehabilitation project consists of five parts. It begins with historical research, data mapping and cross-referencing, and an assessment in collaboration with residents. It continues with a study of the pathologies of each building envelope, focusing mainly on balconies, cornices, wall cladding, and roofs, and proposes intervention guidelines, always governed by best practices in rehabilitation. These are based on the recommendations of the Pla del Color d’Olot (Olot Color Plan), the Associació Grup de Recuperació i Estudi de la Tradició Arquitectònica (Association for the Recovery and Study of Architectural Tradition), and regulations from municipalities with successful and validated architectural heritage rehabilitation policies. The third part of the project involves the removal of all inappropriate elements such as air conditioning compressors, wiring, unused antennas, etc. The fourth part is the color proposal, which is based on the local tradition of ennobling facades with paint, influenced by Olot Art School since the late 18th century and the decorators trained there. The patterns of each building are based on historical research using old photographs and paintings. The colors follow the Pla del Color d’Olot and incorporate the color scheme used by Xavier Bulbena to paint two facades in the square. Additionally, Gabinet del Color conducts stratigraphic studies and makes proposals for the two catalogued buildings: Can Casabona and the former Ràdio Puig store. The fifth part of the project focuses on commercial spaces, increasing window transparency to improve street comfort and ensuring that signage and lighting comply with regulations. Additionally, studies are being conducted on centralizing installations in each building and the feasibility of installing shared elevators.
The Pla de Millora Urbana (Urban Improvement Plan) within the Plaça Major area and a program of conditional subsidies are the tools that make this operation possible. The PMU defines the scope and justifies the public interest of the investment, incorporates the rehabilitation project, and develops pilot regulations to be tested before expanding them to the entire old town. The plan’s rights and obligations establish a three-year period for property owners to complete the renovations. Following this, the City Council allocates the budget initially reserved for urbanizing the space to a grant covering 90% of rehabilitation costs, which 15 out of 19 properties opted for. In return, accepting the subsidy requires property owners to renovate and place the vacant homes on the market within a four-year period.
Thus, the facade rehabilitation and color treatment project is the visible part of a process that should culminate in the reactivation of 25 housing units. Meanwhile, this process has led to the creation of a working group bringing together residents and shopkeepers, committed to organizing events that strengthen community ties and reinforce the square’s central role.
