The project revitalizes this area by pedestrianizing it and intervening in the pavement, street furniture, facilities, lighting, vegetation and children's games to adapt it to the new uses of its citizens.
Especially relevant is the spatial reconfiguration. Thanks to the new proposed geometry, unevenness is saved and the project gains a new square that serves as a hinge to unite the two promenades and resolve the ambitious functional program requested by the City Council.
Urban renovation of "El Firal" by Bach, Bayona, Colomer, Pauné. Photograph by Eugeni Bach.
Urban renovation of "El Firal" by Bach, Bayona, Colomer, Pauné. Photograph by Adrià Goula.
Project description by Jaume Bach, Anna Bach, Eugeni Bach, Xevi Bayona and Alba Colomer
The Miquel Blay Boulevard, known as “El Firal”, and the Bisbe Guillament Boulevard (El Firalet) are together one of the most emblematic places in the city. Located in the centre, these two tree-lined streets contain some of the most relevant buildings in the city, including the City Hall, the Main Theater, Casa Sola-Morales and Casa Gaietà Vila.
Historically, “El Firal” was a space for meeting and coming together with the citizens. It currently hosts a large number of activities, including the weekly open-air market and the main Olot festivities such as the “Festes del Tura”, which require flexibility and versatility in this public space. In this sense, the proposal intended to reverse the situation of recent years, in which the pavement, urban elements and other pieces presented a high level of heterogeneity due to improvised solutions that had taken place across recent decades, limiting versatility and functionality.
Central to the intervention is the proposal’s elimination of road traffic on the passage, limited to what is strictly necessary and establishing a traffic strategy for nearby streets that permit pacifying this part of the city.
Urban renovation of "El Firal" by Bach, Bayona, Colomer, Pauné. Photograph by Adrià Goula.
In order to achieve these goals, the proposal uses different existing structures to provide a new sense of functionality to this space, so representative of the city of Olot. The strategy consists of defining the limits of “El Firal” and “El Firalet”, with the understanding that these spaces are protagonists both historically and culturally in the life of the city. Thus the project proposes a series of strategies for the materials of the different pavements, urban buildings and lighting to highlight the limits of these spaces, while at the same time, they are totally permeable. In demarcating the geometry of these two boulevards, the interstitial space is solved with a simple topographic movement, providing a new plaza in the city, which brings together both public spaces while providing the functional capacity required by the municipality.
This new central space between “El Firal” and “El Firalet” provides for a multiplicity of uses, thanks to its open character. It solves the topographic discontinuity, eliminating all barriers and providing children’s play spaces, a stage and an open plaza for events of all kinds.
