Valencia, 1930. Carlos Gens Minguet runs the old family workshop which, over time, has become a factory dedicated to the manufacture of small machinery, industrial valves and hydraulic pumps. The GEYDA brand that he created with his partner, Rafael Dalli, has become increasingly well known and the company requires new premises for its growing needs.

To build it, Gens selected a top architect, Cayetano Borso di Carminati, designer of the Rialto Theatre, among other buildings. He asked him to create a factory with a different and innovative design, located on what is now Avenida de Burjassot, on the periphery of the city. In the project he took into account not only the production process of the foundry, with great aesthetic taste, but also the workers, for whom he designed changing rooms with showers and a canteen.

The facilities were gradually extended and improved, with the addition of new machinery that eventually replaced almost all of the manual production. It was a period of splendour that gradually gave way to decline until 1991, when the factory was finally closed. This marked the beginning of a slow but inexorable deterioration of the industrial complex, the result of neglect and lack of maintenance, which culminated in the fire that destroyed part of the complex in 2014.

However, fate had a second chance for these facilities. A few months after the accident, the promoters of the Fundació Per Amor a l’Art bought the building in order to renovate it, give it a new life and make it available to the foundation as the headquarters of its Centre d’Art.

Currently, the Bombas Gens buildings dedicate most of their space, the restored warehouses, to the new Centre d’Arts Digitals, dedicated to the exhibition and production of new artistic formats and immersive experiences. In addition, the Fundació Per Amor a l’Art has a newly built space that houses its Social Action programme and a Wilson Team Coordination Centre, which promotes research into this rare disease.

Team of architects in charge of the restoration:

Architect: Ramón Esteve

Restoration Architect: Eduardo de Miguel

Museum Architect: Annabelle Selldorf

Digital book Bombas Gens 1930 – 2019. Historia, rehabilitación y nuevos usos (Bombas Gens 1930-2019. History, restoration and new uses), about the transformation of the building, available here.