Walden 7

The Walden 7 is an apartment building designed by Ricardo Bofill's team and located in the town of Sant Just Desvern, close to Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. It was built in 1975.[1] The original project includes 446 residences. The name of the building is inspired by B. F. Skinner's science-fiction novel, Walden Two, which depicts a utopian community and itself is a reference to Henry David Thoreau's novel Walden.[1] It is noted for its use of modules to create apartments and many public community spaces.[2]

The Walden 7

Structure and usage

With a budget lower than the norm for subsidized housing at the time, Walden 7 was built in the area to the west of Barcelona. It was originally designed as one of five similar blocks.[1] The building is composed of 18 towers which are displaced from their base, forming a curve and coming into contact with the neighbouring towers, described as a "vertical labyrinth with seven interconnecting interior courtyards."[3] The area originally devoted to communal uses was reduced to allow an increased number of apartments. These apartments are formed on the basis of one or more 28-square-metre (33 sq yd) modules,[1] which creates, on different levels, dwellings that range from single-module studios to large multiple-module apartments. Partitions between modules may be modified, designed to shift as family structures shift.[1]

Walden 7 was designed with small, uniform windows and no central heating. Its original design included a bath in the middle of the room, which most residents removed. The original exterior façade was covered with small, red ceramic tiles backed with the wrong adhesive, creating a pedestrian hazard as the tiles fell off the building.,[1][3] The local government began repairing the structure in the 1990s,[1] and a 1995 refurbishment removed most of the tiles and replaced them with red paint.[3] The only remaining tiles exist on the small balconies.[1] The interior is painted in blue, purple, and yellow.[2] It is accessible by tram; the stop near the building is called Walden.[4]

Although the building is a private apartment complex, it offers public tours.[4]

In film
  • building
  • balconies
  • patio
gollark: Which I suppose can make some sense if you assume that it's "rational" in that people... like surprises, or something, but...
gollark: People *play the lottery*, too.
gollark: People somehow can't accept positive-sum games.
gollark: > A core proposition in economics is that voluntary exchanges benefit both parties. We show that people often deny the mutually beneficial nature of exchange, instead espousing the belief that one or both parties fail to benefit from the exchange. Across 4 studies (and 7 further studies in the Supplementary Materials), participants read about simple exchanges of goods and services, judging whether each party to the transaction was better off or worse off afterwards. These studies revealed that win–win denial is pervasive, with buyers consistently seen as less likely to benefit from transactions than sellers. Several potential psychological mechanisms underlying win–win denial are considered, with the most important influences being mercantilist theories of value (confusing wealth for money) and naïve realism (failing to observe that people do not arbitrarily enter exchanges). We argue that these results have widespread implications for politics and society.
gollark: (linking because I happened to read it recently)

See also

References
  1. King, Emily (2016-04-28). "Fortress of Solitude". Frieze. Retrieved 2019-08-27.
  2. Naja, Ramzi (2013-02-22). "AD Classics: Walden 7 / Ricardo Bofill". ArchDaily. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  3. "An Apartment Building Inspired By a Sci-Fi Utopia". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  4. "Visit Walden 7 in Barcelona". Roca Gallery. 2018-03-19. Retrieved 2019-08-30.
  5. "El Amante Bilingue/the Bilingual Lover (Novela (Booket Numbered)) (Spanish Edition)". Abe Books. Retrieved 2019-08-30.


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