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sq2
sq2
MAIAD x CMA 26
- MAIAD 26
This place once pulsed with the rhythm of manual labor. For 44 years, it operated as a cornerstone of this deeply community-centered neighborhood of Barcelona, shaped by the hands of countless workers.
Today, the factory stands abandoned, its surrounding land left unmaintained and occasionally repurposed.
This intervention proposes covering the entire plot with a plastic-like skin fabric engineered to decompose over exactly 44 years, mirroring the factory’s lifespan. As the “skin” tears and breaks down, mold and vegetation will gradually take its place, until the site is fully reclaimed by nature.
The skin is textured to resemble the aged, weathered skin of an older worker from that era. Skin was chosen deliberately. Manual labor leaves its mark on the body, and skin is what covers us entirely, just as this fabric covers the entire plot. It becomes a metaphor for the workers themselves, wrapping the site in the very surface that bore decades of effort.
Factories are often remembered as mechanical, industrial entities, while the people who animated them daily fade from memory. This project is a gesture of respect: an homage to the generation of workers whose hands built this place, and a reminder that behind every industrial structure lies a community of human labor worth acknowledging.
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