Intro

About

In this first stage, the catalogue focuses on the modern and contemporary architecture designed and built between 1832 –year of construction of the first industrial chimney in Barcelona that we establish as the beginning of modernity– until today.

The project is born to make the architecture more accessible both to professionals and to the citizens through a website that is going to be updated and extended. Contemporary works of greater general interest will be incorporated, always with a necessary historical perspective, while gradually adding works from our past, with the ambitious objective of understanding a greater documented period.

The collection feeds from multiple sources, mainly from the generosity of architectural and photographic studios, as well as the large amount of excellent historical and reference editorial projects, such as architectural guides, magazines, monographs and other publications. It also takes into consideration all the reference sources from the various branches and associated entities with the COAC and other collaborating entities related to the architectural and design fields, in its maximum spectrum.

Special mention should be made of the incorporation of vast documentation from the COAC Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.

The rigour and criteria for selection of the works has been stablished by a Documental Commission, formed by the COAC’s Culture Spokesperson, the director of the COAC Historical Archive, the directors of the COAC Digital Archive, and professionals and other external experts from all the territorial sections that look after to offer a transversal view of the current and past architectural landscape around the territory.

The determination of this project is to become the largest digital collection about Catalan architecture; a key tool of exemplar information and documentation about architecture, which turns into a local and international referent, for the way to explain and show the architectural heritage of a territory.

Aureli Mora i Omar Ornaque
Directors arquitecturacatalana.cat

credits

About us

Project by:

Created by:

Directors:

2019-2024 Aureli Mora i Omar Ornaque

Documental Commission:

2019-2024 Ramon Faura Carolina B. Garcia Francesc Rafat Antoni López Daufí Joan Falgueras Anton Pàmies Mercè Bosch Josep Ferrando Fernando Marzá Aureli Mora Omar Ornaque

External Collaborators:

2019-2024 Lluis Andreu Sergi Ballester Helena Cepeda Inès Martinel Maria Jesús Quintero

With the support of:

Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de Cultura

Collaborating Entities:

ArquinFAD

 

Fundació Mies van der Rohe

 

Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico

 

Arxiu Mas

 

Basílica de la Sagrada Família

 

Museu del Disseny de Barcelona

 

EINA Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art de Barcelona

Design & Development:

edittio Nubilum
Suggestions

Suggestion box

Request the image

We kindly invite you to help us improve the dissemination of Catalan architecture through this space. Here you can propose works and provide or amend information on authors, photographers and their work, along with adding comments. The Documentary Commission will analyze all data. Please do only fill in the fields you deem necessary to add or amend the information.

The Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya is one of the most important documentation centers in Europe, which houses the professional collections of more than 180 architects whose work is fundamental to understanding the history of Catalan architecture. By filling this form, you can request digital copies of the documents for which the Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya manages the exploitation of the author's rights, as well as those in the public domain. Once the application has been made, the Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya will send you an approximate budget, which varies in terms of each use and purpose.

Detail:

* If the memory has known authorship or rights, cite them in the field above 'Comments' .

Remove * If the photographs has known authorship or rights, cite them in the field above 'Comments'.
You can attach up to 5 files of up to 10 MB each.

Works (5)

On the Map

Awarded
Cataloged
Disappeared
All works

Constellation

Chronology (5)

  1. Servei Estació

    Francesc Cavaller i Soteras, Josep Maria Soteras i Mauri

    Servei Estació

    The Servei Estació was the first modern-style Catalan gas station built at the end of the 1930s. Its founder, José Manzanares, began to combine the refueling service with the importation of petroleum related products, evolving towards plastic and primary transformation materials, until it became a multi-product store. The evolution of the business led to the need to build the current building, with a much broader commercial program that has led it to become the El Corte Inglés (the biggest Spanish shopping centre) of hardware stores. The Soteras i Cavaller project is an open plan building. The only fixed elements are the vertical communications core and the escalators, which were the first ones in Barcelona. The building is separated from one of the partitions due to the need to respect the rear façade of an existing building, which allows it to gain lighting and finish the building in the form of a front wall. The elevations combine large windows with vertical grey granite cladding. The metal pillars appear marked on the façade and end up finishing off the building with a metal canopy.
  2. First Extension of Camp Nou

    Antonio Bergnes de las Casas i Soteras, Francesc Cavaller i Soteras, Juan Pablo Mitjans i Perelló, Francesc Mitjans Miró, Josep Maria Soteras i Mauri

    First Extension of Camp Nou

    The Stadium was inaugurated in September 1957, the first phase being built with just the first two stands and a symmetrical crown. The profile of the Stadium was characterised by the large roof canopy, with a new design adapted by the architects to the conventional techniques of the time. It was not until 1982, already under the presidency of the ineffable Josep Lluís Nuñez, when the original asymmetry of the Stadium was completed with the third tier for the celebration of the World Championship for National Teams. The project for this second phase was carried out by Mitjans and Soteras, together with Juan Pablo Mitjans, son of the first, and Francisco Cavaller, nephew of the latter. The final construction was characterised by the assembly of an envelope of slats around the entire perimeter of the building, and by the inclusion of the body of ramps on the east façade, originally independent, within the volume of the third tier. These ramps, hanging taut from the rear façade, increase the presumed drama of the complex, even at the cost of eliminating the value of the original project as a mediating element. In 1994, due to UEFA regulations, the first tier was adapted, moving the spectators from standing to sitting. This change involved lowering the level of the playing field by almost 3 metres, with the inevitable consequences on the isoptics of the Stadium. The stoic spectacular nature of the original vision of the Stadium and its access to the grandstand on a ramp from the curved geometry car park located in Arístides Mayol, was gradually disfigured from 1957 with the appearance of a crude constellation of buildings. Among them, the beautiful dome of the Palau Blaugrana still shines with its own light, unfortunately currently condemned to demolition, carried out by Soteras together with Cavaller and the engineer Florencio del Pozo. Its less fortunate exterior volumetry clumsily intermingles between a group of banal auxiliary buildings. The set, far from the mythical category of the stadium, ruins the symbolic access to the building. Also, the additions made to the west façade, including the current museum headquarters, with similar authorship, do not help to not deny the hypothesis of the existence of a genetic component in the quality of an architect. Architectural knowledge, and this is even more visible when intervening in a pre-existing building, is probably of doubtful hereditary character. It is acquired with effort, dedication, perseverance, and even though it may not be fashionable today, with high doses of humility and willingness to serve society. More than fifty years later, the Camp Nou maintains its stoic dignity and functionality as a stadium. Another question is whether it is the right set for broadcasting a football match, when the viewer becomes part of the show. Or when the ancient temple of sport is transformed, biblically, into a market. Well, into a mall.

Bústia suggeriments

Et convidem a ajudar-nos a millorar la difusió de l'arquitectura catalana mitjançant aquest espai, on podràs proposar-nos obres, aportar o esmenar informació sobre obres, autors i fotògrafs, a més de fer-nos tots aquells comentaris que consideris.