Photo by Adrià Goula. Pubblicata il 12 Aprile 2011.

The lower station of the Tibidabo funicular was built in 1888, designed as a train station, from down below the mountain, transporting people to the park but also to the inhabitants’ homes. The building is a typical train station: with a lower area, where the entrance is located, and an apartment in the first floor for the station keeper lived.

Photo by Adrià Goula. Pubblicata il 12 Aprile 2011.

On the top of the volume, a gable roof protects the train and the platforms, as if it was the “house of the train.” Obviously, the position of the building is in a slope, due to the funicular characteristics. Over the years, the building has been modified, with little auxiliary constructions added alongside. The façades were even painted as placards. These paintings gave the building a very unique commercial look. The proposal suggests that this hall-building should be a premonition of what happens up above in the park, where people meet fantasy.

Photo by Adrià Goula. Pubblicata il 12 Aprile 2011.

Our intervention is based in cleaning the building of the addings and wants to achieve a free and diaphanous space inside. The construction that covers the platforms is built again, maintaining the same wooden structure, using waterproof materials in order to protect machinery.

Photo by Adrià Goula. Pubblicata il 12 Aprile 2011.

Colour tiling in the roof is preserved as well. The exterior walls are repaired and painted again. Due to budget causes, painted placards could not be refurbished. They were repainted with blue stripes on a protective layer. Thus, these paintings will be recoverable one day.

Photo by Adrià Goula. Pubblicata il 12 Aprile 2011.

Inner spaces are recovered as they were in the past, making tile and metallic ceilings visible. The cast iron pillars and the original pavement are restored. Some pieces are added, looking like flowers on the ground. White blankets occupy the hall area, working as screens for projections of the park activities. While waiting for the train, the audience would be able to enjoy these projections on pladur-and-wood-made blankets.

Photo by Adrià Goula. Pubblicata il 12 Aprile 2011.

In fact, they are something like a fragile occupation, as if they were ghosts. Everything is built with the same system: the ticket office and the arrival pergola.

Photo by Adrià Goula. Pubblicata il 12 Aprile 2011.

The small toilette all covered with curved reflector stainless steel, reinterprets a magic mirror room. Windows are restored and protected with blankets made of expanded metal sheets, with a scaled-fish look. It gets fragmented when it is opened, inviting to enter, attracting people as the other park buildings. Natural light is filtered through these metallic curtains.

Another part of the project is painting again two old trains as two big coloured worms that move up and down the woods. All the metallic enclosures, in the end, get mixed with the vision of the trees.