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. 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.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. The building is composed of 18 towers which are displaced from their base, forming a curve and coming into contact with the neighbouring towers. The result is a vertical labyrinth with seven interconnecting interior courtyards. 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 30m2 modules, creating on different levels, dwellings that range from a studio, consisting of a single module, to large four-module apartments.In film In the 1993 film The Bilingual Lover, two characters live in Walden 7. The falling tiles are mentioned.Trivia The tramway stop near the building is called Walden. The façade was originally covered with small ceramic tiles. As these tiles kept falling down and became a hazard for pedestrians, in 1995 a refurbishing of the building took out most of them and the façade was painted instead.