Walden 7

The Taller de Arquitectura, an interdisciplinary group created and led by Ricardo Bofill, designed Walden 7 for the site of the former Sanson cement works in Sant Just Desvern. The Taller drew on architecture, engineering, psychology, philosophy and the arts, and among its members were Ramón Collado, Anna Bofill, Joan Malagarriga, Dolors Rocamora, Serena Vergano, Salvador Clotas, Manuel Núñez Yanowsky and José Agustín Goytisolo. Building work began in 1972.

The name points to Henry David Thoreau's Walden, whose utopian ideas inspired the project, and to B. F. Skinner's Walden Two (1948), which describes life in a community of about a thousand people. Skinner's book goes as far as a sixth community; this one was meant to be the seventh. The aim was a "vertical city", a self-sufficient community in which residents could live, work and meet without leaving the building. Walden 7 was only the first phase of a larger scheme, the Ciudad en el Espacio, which went no further because of budget and feasibility.

The building was finished in 1975 on a tight budget compared with other social housing of the time. From 1977 the tiles on the facade began to come loose. The developer went bankrupt, leaving residents with nobody responsible for repairs; the town council refused to declare the building a ruin and accepted the court-ordered award of the developer's assets in return for paying for the works. In 1986 an agreement between residents and the authorities steered it away from demolition, and since 7 May 1987 it has had legal protection. The rehabilitation, coordinated by the municipal company Promocions Municipals SA (PROMUNSA), ran from 1993 to 1995 and cost about 1,000 million pesetas, roughly 6 million euros; it restored the building's safety and kept its original structure.

Eighteen interlinked towers make up a building more than 40 m high and fifteen levels tall, with 446 dwellings built from 30 m² modules. The modules combine into homes of one to four cells, duplexes included. The forms are sinuous and the structure labyrinthine: walkways, stairs, bridges and balconies run through the building at different heights, some paths opening to the sky and the city, others turned inward.

The structure is reinforced concrete, used for the towers and for the interior elements alike, which gives the building a monumental presence. The front facade suggests a large letter M and the rear one a double O; both are faced with terracotta ceramic tiles. Semicircular windows in mineral glass are scattered irregularly but with a certain symmetry, and play with the light.

The clay red of the outside is answered by an intense blue in the shared areas: corridors and large interior courtyards, where fountains and green spaces have been installed. Besides the dwellings, the programme included two rooftop swimming pools with views of Barcelona, a small library, shops, bars and meeting rooms.

Walden 7 is a residential building: close to a thousand people live there.

Walden 7 is private property. The building is easy to see from outside, as are, next to it, the great concrete chimney and the Taller de Arquitectura, with which it forms a trilogy. The interior can be visited only with the residents' prior permission, requested by email; without it, visits, filming and photo reports are not allowed inside.