Location: Sabadell, Spain

Design Team: JAAS Julià Arquitectes Associats

Area: 8,294 m²  

Year: 2025

Photography: Adrià Goula

Design Features: Sallarès Deu occupies a group of former textile buildings in Sabadell, Spain. A century of industrial change had filled many of the spaces between the brick sheds and blurred the logic of the original complex. JAAS begins its transformation in those gaps. By reopening concealed facades and restoring the courtyards, the practice allows education, exchange and civic life to inhabit the inherited framework of production.

Parallel factory halls establish the rhythm of solid building and intervening void. A new transverse entrance distributes movement toward a central, greenhouse-like atrium. Its light roof shelters a former courtyard while leaving the scale and surface of the brick walls legible. Walking through the complex brings the depth of the old halls into dialogue with a new network of bridges, stairs and passages.

A culinary school anchors the first completed phase. Instead of subdividing the old shell with permanent partitions, the architects inserted a freestanding timber structure for teaching and support spaces. It can be altered or removed as programmes change. Below ground, a reopened courtyard draws daylight to an auditorium, cooking workshops and learning areas. Brick, timber, steel and glass retain their distinct identities while working together as an inhabitable whole.

The atrium also operates as a passive environmental device. In colder weather it captures solar warmth; in warmer months it can open to encourage ventilation and heat release, aided by the thermal mass of existing masonry and underground spaces. New solid-timber and cross-laminated-timber elements support prefabrication, lower-impact construction and future reversibility. Adaptability is treated as part of the building’s architecture, not a promise deferred to a later renovation.

Sallarès Deu gives industrial heritage a present-tense role in the city, making room for learning, making and gathering within the old factory. JAAS lists 8,294 m² as the area of its overall project. The city’s execution documents identify 2,269.65 m² as the built area of the first implemented phase featured here.

Design Team: Founded in Barcelona in 1982, JAAS Julià Arquitectes Associats is led by Josep M. Julià, Albert Clèries, Jordi Gorgues and Manuel Julià. Its work spans architecture, heritage renewal, urban design and landscape, with a sustained interest in how existing places can support new forms of public life.

The practice approaches architecture as an open framework for everyday change. Reversible interventions, material life cycles and passive environmental strategies recur across its work. JAAS has received the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona, Bonaplata awards and the 2024 FAD City and Landscape Award. The Sallarès Deu team also included Gil Roca, Tiaré Gàlvez, Rut Cabrero and Meritxell Padrós.