Flores & Prats Architects has released a new documentary series that explores the practice’s design process for the Sala Beckett Theatre and International Drama Centre in Barcelona.

Titled ESCALA 1:5, the five-part series retraces the journey behind the architectural renovation of the space and the bond that ties the former workers club to its neighbourhood. Each episode is ten minutes long and delves in to the various aspects of the renovation including Roofs and walls, Doors and windows, Pavements, Stairs and Furniture.

Architects Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats feature in the series along with Toni Casares, the director of Sala Beckett, Sergi Belbel, playwright and former director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, artists Soraya Smithson and Antoni Miralda, and designer Curro Claret.

The building, originally constructed in the 1920s, was in ruins, however it had a high number of features that Flores & Prats chose to leave in place.

“The ruinous state in which we found the building was of interest, not because we wanted to restore it, but rather to take the ruin forward and make it participate, with its unfinished character of superimposed periods, in a new reality that would continue to be updated. The challenge of the project was therefore to adapt the building to its new use without banishing its ghosts,” say architects Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats.

The design of Sala stems from the spacial and decorative qualities of the existing building, a part of the identity assumed by the city of Barcelona at a time when the workers’ associations emerged.

Each significant element has been carefully drawn and collected, from the frames to the doors, the polychrome tiles, rose windows and the formations present in the stone and the plasterwork.

“The new Sala Beckett is a space where the audience member enters and breathes, understands, feels that they are not customers for an industrial product, but part of a dialogue,
and makes sense of what is presented on stage,” adds Toni Casares, playwright and director of Sala Beckett.

The series is available on demand here.