Toni Vizcaíno, Production Director of TRAC: "We spent four months researching what the skin of La Rotonda was telling us"
The rehabilitation of La Rotonda has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of various companies and professionals of proven solvency, coordinated by the team of Núñez y Navarro. A key player in this network has been TRAC, a company specializing in the rehabilitation and restoration of facades. We spoke with their Production Director, Toni Vizcaíno.
What has been, exactly, the role of TRAC in the rehabilitation of the Andreu tower, La Rotonda, which is nearly completed?
TRAC has been in charge of restoring the facades, we have dedicated ourselves to restoring the dome with all its ceramics and mosaic, and the dividing walls at the back, from the consulate side, and we have stuccoed the new part of Lleó XIII street - we have done the stuccos -, and we are also doing the interior stuccos of the entire estate: the stuccos of the communal areas, including staircases, lobbies, anterooms, and ceilings.
A vosotros os llega un proyecto ejecutivo de un arquitecto (en este caso, Alfred Arribas), y dependéis de una dirección de obra también ajena, que ejerce el promotor. Sin embargo, ¿hacéis una búsqueda previa sobre el terreno, antes de empezar a intervenir, o os llega hecha?
As you rightly say, we receive a project with guidelines, but these need to be verified on-site to see exactly which part needs to be restored, because it is indicated by a Heritage agent [from the Barcelona City Council], who is Mr. Quim Font. He gives some restoration instructions, and in pursuit of that, the project was created. Our job is precisely to see if the project corresponds with the reality we have; above all, it involves a lot of fieldwork, that is, a lot of work on-site. So we go to the construction site.
We were in a phase of about four months researching, exactly, what we were dealing with and what the building's skin was telling us, until -in close collaboration, always, with the supervising architect, Mr. Arribas- we found and saw, exactly, how we had to restore it, in which direction it should go, including the stuccos as well as the ceramic and mosaic areas.
A three-way collaboration, then, between TRAC, Alfred Arribas, Heritage, and Núñez y Navarro as the promoter.
It's a triangulation.
How does such an extraordinary assignment reach TRAC?
We arrived because we had already collaborated with Núñez y Navarro. We came from working together on the apartments on Bruc street with Casp (the Midtown Apartments), where we had done the facade, which was the first commission that TRAC had with Núñez y Navarro. Later, we were also commissioned to do the facades of the hotel on Mallorca street with Muntaner (The Corner Hotel), and they offered us the chance to work on the facades of La Rotonda. I suppose it was because of the level of trust we had earned through the professionalism with which the work had been delivered. This generated confidence in them to be able to give us those facades or, at the very least, the study of those facades from the beginning.
Afterwards, everything matured; in other words, there was a maturation process both financially and relationally, and we ended up getting married. Until four months after we began our research, we were not employed (...).
Surprises, curiosities, satisfactions. Emotions. Discoveries. The relatively good condition of the small temple, we commented.
The curiosity of La Rotonda is that everything was covered with nets and tarps. As you gradually uncovered the nets and tarps, removing them, you would discover the work areas, you would uncover the vestiges of the estate, they would guide you on how to recover it. What we have done is to uncover, together with the craftsmen, all the areas of the facades, in terms of stucco, stone, and the sgraffito on the upper part, which are a marvel.
We were very surprised to find that there are still certain remnants that can be recovered in their current state, and then the great surprise of how we could do it and what we could do was in the dome. We found some ceramics in a rather degraded state, but they guided us on how we should finalize the dome, which is what can be seen today.
The artisans -the decorative arts- are the invisible heroes of modernism. La Rotonda is the result of the architect Adolf Ruiz Casamitjana, but also of the creative, not just physical, work of the ceramist Lluís Bru i Salelles, collaborator of Domènech i Montaner. What are the current artisans like who rehabilitate the works of those other artisans from a century ago?
Nowadays, restoration is taught at the university level, producing highly skilled individuals with many concerns and a desire to create. However, they lack experience: craftsmanship is very much based on experience. In the past, people often came from families of craftsmen, and the profession was passed down from parents to children, preserving the trade in this manner. Today, there are craftsmen who have learned and had the desire to learn; these craftsmen have their own criteria; at all times, there is an attempt to grasp the criteria of how we have reached this point.
The same materials: working with lime, working with trencadís, making the trencadís yourself as we have done in La Rotonda, where we took the tiles, chipped them, and custom-made them to fit into all the spaces that required trencadís. In terms of stucco restoration, we have examined the composition of the lime layers to make the ideal layers so that there would be a good conjunction of the old stucco with the stucco that we have placed. We have looked for systems that were also used in the past to work the sgraffito with potassium silicate.
With an approach, always, from the perspective of recovering with the techniques that have always been used; they are techniques of the craftsmen, as you well said. The ceramists have worked somewhat fifty-fifty with modern techniques and artisanal techniques in order to give the roundabout area, specifically, the slenderness it has today.
And what we have always tried to do is to leave it at the point that has been indicated to us and that was also requested by the facades: they asked not to do anything too new, nothing too flashy, but something that would be in harmony with the structure of La Rotonda, which I think has turned out quite well.
More than correct. Congratulations on the work done and thank you very much!
