Situated in a series of old medieval buildings in the Gothic neighborhood, one of Barcelona’s most historic districts.
Project Name: Hotel Mercer – Barcelona
Studio Name: Moneo Brock Studio
Status: Built
The Hotel Mercer elegantly blends the old with the new. The hotel is structured around the original courtyard, which has been preserved and planted with citrus trees. Most of the rooms have balconies towards either the courtyard or the street, so natural light abounds. The interior design is modern and fresh, but at the same time subdued and respectful of its setting. On every occasion we took the building’s historical elements and idiosyncrasies, its corbels and its arches, as hidden treasures and design opportunities.
As a result, every room is unique, as the overlay of the new design lets the spatial qualities of the older construction read through. The hotel’s high standard of finish and level of amenity complement the genuine antique roughness of the structure. The search for comfort permeates all our choices as designers, and the warmth of textures and colors plays a critical role in our choice of materials. In the simplicity of forms it is evident that we wanted the medieval building structure to be the protagonist.
The project restores the masonry walls that once belonged to the city’s fortifications, parts of which date back to Roman times. The dialogue between the old walls and the new elements is the heart of this project and, at the same time, the instrument by which the traveler reads a part of the story of Barcelona.
The main idea behind the project was to recover the spatial character of the historic buildings, eliminating the buildings added during the XX century. The project proposes the introduction of a gallery surrounding the principal courtyard to create a new relationship between the various parts. Two new courtyards, smaller than the original, supplement the main feature of the project and provide lighting and air circulation to all the parts of the building.
Finally, we want to emphasize that our intentions in developing the project have been guided by our respect and recognition of the value of the inherited elements, by our search for an ideal relationship among the parts, and by our wish to make the best volumetric adjustments given the project’s surroundings. Moneo Brock contributed the interior design to the architecture project developed by Rafael Moneo.
Moneo Brock is an international architectural, planning and design firm, of versatile professionals committed to the identification and implementation of sustainable solutions, with great faith in the promise of good design.
We begin our work with a rigorous analysis of the functional requirements of the project in question, setting high standards for the optimization of resources. Convinced that a fundamental concept must be elaborated for each project, we design specifically architectural solutions wherein linguistic and spatial structures harmonize in a
coherent whole.
When working in cities, we count as the project’s first task the repair or
enhancement of the existing urban context and the enlivening of bordering streets. We give great importance to urban design and to the creation of public space as a social good. When working outside the city, we design our interventions to protect and preserve the natural beauty that we find; the new, constructed landscape is designed to flow from our projects and connect holistically to the surrounding terrain.
Each project’s local climate is analyzed in detail so that energy efficiency can be assured, and the social and economic context is thoughtfully reviewed so that all conditions for true sustainability can be met. Finally, the construction details and the selection of materials are always rigorously controlled in order to be in concordance with the project’s fundamental concept.
We are sensitive to the synergies that emerge in collaborative processes, viewing teamwork as fundamental to the creation of great work. We have extensive experience collaborating with large teams of engineers, consultants, and specialists in the production and coordination of architectural projects, from conceptualization through construction completion. We have completed projects of varying scales, both public and private, and our work has been widely published in international media. We view each job as an opportunity to create a unique structure that can transform a part of the world, no matter the scale.
Moneo Brock has broad experience working on a variety project types,
including:
• Museums
• Educational Buildings and Campuses
• Urban Infrastructure
• Religious Architecture
• Hospitality and Wellness Architecture and Design
• Rehabilitation of Historic Structures
• Interior Design
