Black Dye House

Architecture

First Prize Winner

The former black dye house, within the Fabra i Coats industrial complex, becomes the home of Barcelona, City and Labor, a museum project developed alongside the Boiler Room, where the factory’s energy history is revealed. Located in one of Barcelona’s most significant industrial heritage sites, the project explores the evolving relationship between work, neighborhood, and city. Labor has been a driving force in Barcelona’s modernization and socio-economic transformation, with human work as the enduring thread sustaining the city’s productive life. Conceived as a key node within the Museu d’Història de Barcelona network, the museum operates at both local and metropolitan scales, anchoring the new Besòs heritage and museum axis. The intervention weaves three core intentions: to repurpose the former industrial building with flexibility; to reveal its heritage through recovered construction systems, materials, and existing layers as carriers of memory; and to enhance energy efficiency and sustainability, ensuring a future rooted in continuity.

Location: Sant Andreu, Barcelona
Built Area: 1.822 m²
Competition: 2018
Built: 2025
Authors: Patricia Tamayo, Ramon Valls, MATTERS 
Client: BIMSA/Museu d'Història de Barcelona
General contractor: Arcadi Pla
Construction phase: UTE Tamayo Valls Matters
Specialists: Societat Orgànica (Sustainability consultant)
AIA (MEP consultant)
Bernuz Fernández (Structural engineering consultan)
Ànima (Quantity surveying consultant)
Qestudi (Construction management)
Photography: José Hevia, Aleix Bagué

Photo: Aleix Bagué

Photo: José Hevia

Photo: Aleix Bagué

Photo: José Hevia

Photo: José Hevia

Photo: José Hevia

Preserved workers’ showers recall the daily routines of the black dye factory. Retained within the rehabilitation, they reinforce the building’s identity as a place of labor, now interpreted through the exhibition.

Photo: Aleix Bagué

The intervention preserves traces of the building’s previous life, allowing the process of transformation to remain visible. Former openings, walls, and structural modifications are not completely erased but subtly revealed through changes in material, texture, and geometry. These marks of the past make the rehabilitation legible, exposing the dialogue between the existing structure and the new intervention.

Photo: José Hevia

Photo: Aleix Bagué

Photo: José Hevia

Photo: Aleix Bagué

HOW WE BUILT IT

CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

We build with care and precision. Energy efficiency, sustainability, and low maintenance guide every decision. Passive strategies, reduced thermal demand, and carefully designed systems work quietly in the background, extending the building’s life while enhancing and respecting what already exists.

RECYCLED MATERIALS

An intervention that almost disappears: architecture through reuse. Roof tiles were dismantled and reused, structures repaired, windows restored, materials given new lives. A radical circular effort, carefully hidden—so the building feels untouched, yet renewed, contemporary, and quietly sustainable.