Tucked into the dense landscape of Barcelona’s Collserola Natural Park, the Valldaura Labs Campus of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) continues its experimental trajectory with the development of CORA, the Cathedral of Robotic Artisans. Conceived as a workshop for a 6-axis KUKA industrial robot, CORA embodies a critical reflection on architecture’s evolving relationship with technology, materiality, and landscape.
CORA Technical Information
- Design Team1-8: IAAC & Valldaura Labs
- Location: Parc de Collserola, Valldaura Labs Campus, Barcelona, Spain
- Site Area: 135-hectare campus
- Client: Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), Valldaura Labs
- Project Year: 2023 – 2025
- Photographs: © Adrià Goula
CORA is a tribute to both craftsmanship and technology, establishing a dialogue between historic architecture and contemporary fabrication.
– IAAC Team
CORA Photographs
Spatial Qualities: Dialogue Between Existing and New Structures
The project posed a complex challenge: to retrofit a 19th-century brick stable into a functional, contemporary fabrication space while preserving its historical integrity. Within a four-month timeframe, an international cohort of MAEBB (Master in Advanced Architecture and Biocities) students designed and built a hybrid structure that simultaneously honors traditional craftsmanship and embraces advanced digital fabrication.
At the heart of the project lies a tension between the old and the new, the solid and the porous, the static and the adaptive. The design retains the original brick walls, reinforcing them structurally while removing the decayed roof to introduce a new timber framework. This act of surgical preservation frames the contemporary intervention as both a response and a counterpoint to the pre-existing architecture.
Internally, the space is organized around the operational needs of the industrial robot. An open-span layout ensures unobstructed movement, while carefully positioned skylights and glazed openings allow natural light to penetrate the interior without compromising environmental control. Above the robot, a prominent skylight creates a dramatic shaft of light that recalls the sacred spatial strategies of ecclesiastical architecture, reinforcing the project’s metaphor of a “cathedral” for contemporary artisanship.
The spatial atmosphere is quiet and refined, a composition of filtered daylight, exposed timber, and restored masonry that balances technological precision with human engagement.
Materiality and Construction: Advanced Timber Engineering
Timber serves as the project’s primary material, chosen for its environmental performance, structural adaptability, and symbolic resonance with the surrounding landscape. A self-supporting arborescent structure, made from solid wood and Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), defines the new roof and internal framework. Seven branching columns, reminiscent of tree trunks, hold aloft a Voronoi-patterned canopy, a formal language derived from nature but realized through digital craftsmanship.
Fabrication processes combined traditional joinery techniques, such as half-lap and mortise-and-tenon, with Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining to achieve precision and structural integrity. Limitations in milling depth required innovative solutions, including multi-layered joint assemblies, each laminated to form a seamless mass.
The external envelope consists of CLT panels milled with a subtle Voronoi pattern, creating a facade that responds dynamically to light and shadow while maintaining a respectful dialogue with the historic brick context. Internally, the panels were left raw, preserving the tactile honesty of the wood.
Above, the project’s green roof system layers include waterproof membranes, geotextiles, and a humus substrate to support an assemblage of local Mediterranean species, such as honeysuckle, lavender, and creeping sedum, reinforcing both the environmental ambitions of the project and its deep integration with the site ecology.
CORA in the Landscape of Architectural Innovation
CORA is more than a technical achievement. It is a built inquiry into the evolving definition of craftsmanship in an era increasingly mediated by automation. By housing a robotic artisan within a structure that is itself a product of both human hands and digital fabrication, the project provocatively blurs the distinctions between the maker and the made.
Within the educational framework of IAAC’s MAEBB program, CORA extends the lineage of prior experimental constructions, such as VOXEL, FLORA, and the Solar Greenhouse, each challenging conventional notions of ecological design and construction methodologies.
Contextually, the project offers a sensitive response to its site, maintaining the integrity of the Collserola Natural Park while advancing a model of bio-digital architecture rooted in a circular bioeconomy. Through its material palette, fabrication techniques, and spatial sensibility, CORA quietly asserts that future architecture need not abandon tradition to innovate. Rather, it must reweave it with new technological threads.
CORA Plans
CORA Image Gallery
Credits and Additional Notes
Direction: Vicente Guallart, Daniel Ibañez, Michael Salka
Executive Director, Valldaura Labs: Laia Pifarré
Project Management: Esin Aydemir
- Design Team: Students of the Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities (MAEBB) 2023/24: Alexander Tamazov, Toni Javor, Emma Rodriguez Berghmans, Neeshi Doshi, Lamprini Makarona, Diana Ruzanska, Alfred Ziad Aramouni, Anushreya Kondapi, Juan Sebastián Batallas Cueva, Marianna Santos Fujii, Varun Sreenath, André Arruda Navarro, Mustafa Teksoy, Oliver Needham, Alireza Shayan, Alkiviadis Avarkiotis, Maya Shoavi, Sharvari Sharath, Sveta Sathyanadhan, Vanessa Marie Alvarado Barrios, Helen Girma, Karla Velarde Sandoval, Kristina Schüssler.
Expert Staff: Bruno Ganem, Marielena Papandreou, Lorenzo Salinas, Viorel Cazacu
Advisors: Miquel Rodriguez, Elena Orte, Guillermo Sevillano, Ignasi Caus, David Valldeoriola, Silvia Burés, Toni Arola, Ionut Cosenco, Carles Enrich, Firas Safieddine, Arturo de la Maza
Sponsors: Tallfusta, Alberch, Montpart
Support: Parc de Collserola, Ajuntament de Cerdanyola del Vallès
