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Architects: Arnau estudi d'arquitectura
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Marc Torra Ferrer
Text description provided by the architects. Building a dream is not easy, but that was the commission. Yes, as usual, but that time it was like never before.
We had to renovate an old building in order to create a space entirely devoted to chocolate. That was the sweet dream of Jordi, the chocolate maker. We had to do it with emotion, with metaphors, with a sense of humour... We had to be at the level of Easter cakes and chickens!
We enter a dream, crossing the bridge, we leave all the troubles behind and we get ready to believe in happiness. We have no doubt that molten chocolate flows out of the workroom until it is concentrated in the finished product sold in the shop.
We taste its sweetness in the basement, which used to be an old storehouse for salted cod - a fact hardly anyone remembers; too much time waiting for desserts... We go up to the workroom, and when the stairs get flooded with light, we meet Jordi, who explains to us why all this makes him so happy.
At the square, protected by its angel, we discover the facade: it is the chocolate tile moulds used in chocolate making. Behind it, there is a vertical space that was born out of the effort to connect the five levels of the building. To achieve this, we rely on the staircase and its visual omnipresence as well as on the different passing gaps that link vertically the three lower levels.
Everything has been specially designed in this project: from the section of the building to the chairs in the tasting area or the chocolate tiles. It is a global and absorbing project, which turned out to be very addictive for us, who have tasted it!
