Punt Verd Recycling Plant
BARCELONA SPAIN
Punt Verd is the most important building in Mercabarna’s New Integral Plan for Recycling Waste. For the first time in the recycling plant’s context, the two different waste types, organic and inorganic, are combined into one loading unloading area, so that the truck’s movements are rationalized. The whole structure was thought as the reflected movement of the circuit that the different materials carry out, from the dispersion to concentration of inorganic materials, from the solid to liquid state of organic ones, and more recently, the classified repartition for new cycles. The shape of the folds, which consists of two big elements that cover the loading area, emulate and suggest the activity of the recycling plant in syncopated ascending and descending movements, opening spaces or turning into a single piece, curved and soft: sliding, poured or liquid.
The structure is less evident: the big porch of the loading platform hides the real structural frame in the center of the building, held by huge pairs of pillars, distributing the structure in volumes and voids accordingly to the two different types of wastes: organic in the volumes, lodged in a hopper, and inorganic in the voids, from which they are unloaded towards the transporting strips.The skeleton which functions with a 6.5m cantilever on one side and one of 4.5 m on the other, is covered with metallic sheets on the outside and with plaster and polycarbonate plates on the inside, which intentionally turn the building into a graphical composition of green and silver colours as well as white letters.
The curves of the building are converted into logotypes for the related activity, and into inverted power lines which echo the purpose of the installation: to reverse the tendency in recycling in order to reach the newly established standard of 70%. Finally, a pattern has been applied to the surrounding walls and urban elements of the construction. The control area emerges regardless the pact.
