The project takes a critical position on a densification scheme implemented by the municipality of Barcelona for the Sant Pau Gym in Raval district. The vertical densification of the plot, as proposed, was counter-argued by a horizontal investigation of the wider neighbourhood and its existing links with the gym. The collective of the gym operates in a multiplicity of spaces in the outdoor space which are included in the proposed intervention. Currently the gym is a point of refuge for rough sleepers, migrants, female victims of domestic violence and members of the LGBTQIA+,  who all benefit from reduced memberships and access to sanitary facilities. The gym is known for its transgender swimming classes; claiming to have the first transgender shower room in the city whilst it also hosts collective cooking, community meetings and provides free wifi and phone charging to young migrant evictees. The design proposal aims to enhance the existing spatial ecology by utilising vacated buildings and open-air plots whose program will expand the scope of the gym, to include affordable housing, as a response to the collectives’ needs in the neighbourhood.

In the proposed ecology a series of vertical and horizontal circulation gestures liberates the rooftops of selected buildings in the neighbourhood for communal use, whilst the spaces on ground floor are administered by the gym to expand its exercise venues, increasing both its capacity and physical participation in the neighbourhood.  The informally occupied empty plots are reinforced by supporting programs. Within the intermediate floors the scheme proposes a series of shared co-living spaces that respond to different models of multi-occupancy; including shared units between two families, flats for bigger families, compact studios for individuals or social takers, and hybrids of various types. These are facilitated through periodic occupation of members of Arrel (a collaborating affordable-housing collective).

The organisation of all the spaces is arranged through a catalogue of spatial activators in the form of furnitures, soft structures and smaller scale objects. For the public facilities a series of dividers organise the various spaces based on different spatial conditions of accessibility and privacy. The public entrance thresholds are concealed with a system of fringed curtains made out of soft insulating tubes allowing the street to be part of the interior and vice versa. The overarching scheme proposes a spatial strategy that aims to reverse the preconceived notion of ownership, privacy and sharing through a multiplicity of noble interventions that organise existing spaces with the bare minimum.