BLACK DYE HOUSE

Architecture

The former black dye house, within the Fabra i Coats industrial complex, becomes the home of Barcelona, City and Labour, 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. Labour 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 MUHBA 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
Autors: Patricia Tamayo, Ramon Valls, MATTERS 
Client: BIMSA/MUHBA
Collaborators: 

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.

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.