The building for the José Antonio Girón Vocational Training School stands as the only work by Francisco Cabrero in Barcelona. Conceived and executed within a remarkably compressed timeframe, just three summer months including excavation and retaining works, it was completed in time for the opening of the academic year in September 1968.
The project materialized as a large, two-storey rectangular volume accommodating facilities for both students and faculty.The building for the José Antonio Girón Vocational Training School stands as the only work by Francisco Cabrero in Barcelona. Conceived and executed within a remarkably compressed timeframe, just three summer months including excavation and retaining works, it was completed in time for the opening of the academic year in September 1968. The project materialized as a large, two-storey rectangular volume accommodating facilities for both students and faculty.
The upper level housed a vast, column-free, double-height hall, a continuous and uninterrupted spatial field capable of alternating between assembly hall and student refectory. The ground floor organized the more service-oriented functions, including kitchens, cafeteria and faculty club. Above, the roof unfolded as an accessible terrace, a belvedere overlooking the surrounding landscape.
Its scale, conceptual and structural clarity, technological audacity, and the refined interplay between interior void, structural system and transparent envelope elevate the building to the status of a true modern monument, typologically singular within the urban fabric of Barcelona.
At the turn of the century, the building entered a prolonged period of underuse, neglect and partial ruin, to the extent that its demolition was decreed in 2005, an outcome from which it was fortunately reprieved at the last moment. Following this decision, it was incorporated into the campus of the Institut d’Ensenyament Secundari Joan Brossa, consolidating its recognition as a modern masterpiece within specialized architectural discourse.
A comprehensive restoration was undertaken, encompassing structure, envelope, partitions and all technical systems. A renewed educational and service program was introduced, including an assembly hall, classrooms, dining facilities, kitchen, library and two studios for visual arts. The intervention reinstated the building’s original clarity and modernity, while reaffirming its primary educational vocation.
The renewed façade joinery and solar control systems enabled compliance with stringent contemporary energy regulations, while preserving the building’s essential lightness and transparency and significantly reducing energy demand. In this way, the inherent logic of the original design was mobilized in favor of interior luminosity and environmental performance.
The original spatial configuration was fully recovered. The upper floor was adapted to accommodate classrooms, yet movable partitions allow the reconstitution of the original grand hall, maintaining both the stage and the unitary functioning of the level as an assembly space.
The ground floor, likewise, entirely restored, now hosts more technically equipped environments for student use, including a cafeteria dining hall, documentation center, winter garden and art studios. Throughout, the building retains the austere character of the original work, and contemporary technical systems are left exposed in dialogue with the restored construction and structural fabric.
In association with Xavier Güell.
