One of the most powerful, most luminous examples of how to recover one’s own heritage, forgotten for too long in a strip of land between La Saïdia and Campanar districts. The old Carlos Gens workshop that, over time, evolved into a hydraulic pump factory. An industrial project that, from its origin, has opted for sensitivity and a taste for space. Gens and his partner, Rafael Dalli, went looking for Cayetano Borso di Carminati, an architect with a privileged vision who established the coordinates of how an industrial building should be on the outskirts of the city, integrating the functionality of the workers into a discourse relevant aesthetic.
The decline of manufacturing led, as a consequence, the death of the building. A long agony until in 2014, the fire in part of the facilities lit a light: the Fundació Per Amor a l’Art acquired the building and rehabilitated it as a museum space, as the center of the foundation itself, providing it with significant areas such as the which houses the Ricard Camarena restaurant.
The recovery work was led by the Ramón Esteve studio (with Eduardo de Miguel as rehabilitation architect and Annabelle Selldorf as museum architect), highlighting the historical essence of the complex. A first-class art center that also serves to interpret the past of the city’s fringes.
