An ephemeral garden for Batlleiroig's 40th anniversary party, Batlleiroig

On July 4, 2021, Batlleiroig celebrated its 40th anniversary, commemorating the date when Enric Batlle and Joan Roig won their first competition to design the Roques Blanques Metropolitan Cemetery in El Papiol, which marked the beginning of the studio. The celebration took place at Mercedes Factory in Barcelona, a key location in the city due to its transformation into a new Ecodistrict of Barcelona. The factory presented itself as the ideal venue for the 40th anniversary celebration, aligning with Batlleiroig's vision of "merging city and nature." The concept The industrial warehouse featured a sawtooth structure with large north-facing skylights allowing natural light to enter. While this green-painted iron structure was attractive as the backdrop for a grand celebration, the surroundings were cold, unwelcoming, and too vast to create an intimate atmosphere. We began to envision how to occupy the space and generate the ambiance of a grand garden, as if it were the future Mercedes Square with the buildings already constructed. It was a complex and beautiful process that resulted in a geometry that was not relevant; our only goal was to create a pleasant context to share the celebration, an ambiance that had to be characteristic of Batlleiroig and showcase its history, present, and future. The intention was to create a highly theatrical sensation at the entrance, seeking a spectacular entry that would make guests feel as though they were entering a forest. As they immersed themselves in this new landscape, the vegetation gradually became less dense, opening up into a large clearing. Around this central space, the green envelope generated multiple areas to accommodate different zones. The power of nature In materializing this idea, the cypress tree proved to be the ideal shrub to create the backdrop of the space, thanks to its availability, easy movement, and assembly. Furthermore, the 500 specimens used could be reused for other nearby landscaping projects. To enhance the feeling of being within a forest, 150 birch trees were added, interspersing the space and creating a canopy that gave the sensation of getting lost in the greenery. Once guests traversed the maze of vegetation at the entrance, six large olive trees added uniqueness to certain points in this woodland clearing. All trees were transported to the nursery for use in other projects, thus closing the loop and avoiding any waste. The dialogue between green and architecture From the very beginning, we sought to highlight the factory's structure, respecting the grid of pillars, which also provided guidelines for designing the landscape of the event. While the vegetation followed a polygonal shape to create a large green funnel leading to the clearing in the forest, the string lights illuminating the space adhered to the structural grid of the warehouse, aiming to showcase its geometry without competing with it. Garden furniture surrounded by birch trees completed this atmosphere, creating small spaces of a domestic scale and following the structure of the warehouse.