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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.
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2019-2024 Aureli Mora i Omar OrnaqueDocumental 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 OrnaqueExternal Collaborators:
2019-2024 Lluis Andreu Sergi Ballester Helena Cepeda Inès Martinel Maria Jesús QuinteroWith the support of:
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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.
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Arquitecte, professor universitari, teòric d’arquitectura i dissenyador. Titulat el 1940. Va treballar en col·laboració amb Manuel Valls. Realitzà entre moltes d’altres edificacions, habitatges unifamiliars, com la Casa Ugalde o la Casa Catasús, així com grans conjunts d’habitatges o la seu de l’Institut Francès.
Source: Arxiu Històric del COAC
Works (40)
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Chronology (48)
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Verge del Carme Housing Complex
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Joan Zaragoza i Albí
Coderch va ser cridat per modificar un projecte redactat per l’Administració, gràcies a la seva vinculació amb l’Instituto Social de la Marina. La intervenció de Coderch va consistir bàsicament en una simplificació formal, funcional i constructiva. Els habitatges formen dos blocs perfectament regulars, curvilinis i paral·lels, de manera que cada habitatge abasta de façana a façana. La crugia divisòria corre en sentit longitudinal. En un tram hi ha la sala d’estar i el dormitori principal, i en l’altre hi ha la resta de dormitoris, la cuina i l’escala d’accés. Coderch va introduir una inclinació en el mur divisori que separa l’escala i la cuina, amb la qual cosa optimitzava el funcionament de l’escala i economitzava l’espai de la cuina. Els blocs formen unes façanes completament planes retallades només per les obertures, cosa que dóna una gran expressivitat a la traça lleugerament corba del conjunt. -
Dwellings for La Maquinista Workers' Cooperative
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Within the imposing urban plot of the Barceloneta, the project proposes a concentration of the built part that allows the release of an important part of public space in the form of a central square, which generates an environmental sponging of the fabric. The houses are grouped in modules of three, completely exterior, with a minimum occupation of the façade thanks to the distribution solution. The use of oblique traces allows all living rooms to face the central space. This central space is articulated by the bevels of the façade planes combined with the successive eaves that appear between lock and lock. Only the secondary bedrooms are supported on the perimeter exterior façade, and this façade is deployed in such a way that the diagonal views are optimised, avoiding the excessively reduced width of the streets. The project was written by Coderch and Valls in 1951, although they are not responsible for the construction management. -
Ugalde House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
On a south-facing mountainside, Coderch chooses to place the house on a protruding point between two slopes, so that the panoramic angle is as wide as possible. The main traces are defined based on the topography, with a retaining wall at the back and a base platform with a circular profile. The guidelines of the walls are determined by the different angles of view on some carefully framed fragments: the four openings of the living room, the separation of the house with the guest wing and the porch below the master bedroom. Access from the street is accompanied by a small wall that connects with the general wall system. The living room, dining room and hall are located at platform level. The distributor on the upper floor is on an intermediate level and has a balcony over the living room. On this same level is the master bedroom. On a slightly higher level there is another bedroom and a large study oriented to the west and to the entrance. The project makes use of great architectural freedom in plan and section and pays very careful attention to the different points of view, which makes life in the house identified with the combined effect of the views and from the same house. -
El Prat Royal Golf Club Service Pavilion
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Robert Terradas i Via, Manuel Valls i Vergés
El pavelló dóna l’esquena al camp de golf i s’orienta cap al sud-oest, tot formant un cos amb dues ales que acullen dos grups de funcions ben diferenciades. S’accedeix per l’eix de les dues ales a un àmbit principal transparent cap a la façana oposada, on hi ha les sales d’estar, el bar i el menjador. A la banda nord queda l’ala del personal de servei, amb un pati propi que recull totes les obertures. Per la banda sud creix la segona ala, que allotja les oficines i els vestidors. El pavelló dóna resposta a les qualitats paisatgístiques pròpies d’un camp de golf per mitjà d’una construcció d’una sola planta, vidrada de terra a sostre en bona part de la façana, i unificada per una gran coberta plana que forma voladís en la majoria del seu perímetre. Així s’aconsegueixen uns àmbits directament relacionats amb l’exterior i ben delimitats per sota de les capçades dels arbres. -
Casa de la Marina Apartment Building
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
The plot is located at the end of one of the long blocks of houses in the Barceloneta neighbourhood. The program had two dwellings per floor planned, with three double bedrooms in each one. Coderch chose to use stone and brick load-bearing walls for the structure. The geometry respects the line parallel to the partition, but is distorted very freely in the transverse direction and also involves the supporting elements. The result is an introverted home, with great rusticity and dramatism thanks to the bending of the walls, the texture of the materials and the filtering of natural light. -
Senillosa House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
En un solar singular de planta quadrada i dimensions reduïdes, amb una sola façana practicable i una alçària de quatre plantes, Coderch ofereix una solució imaginativa per incloure-hi un habitatge unifamiliar amb cinc dormitoris. L’estructura és una caixa de pedra que fa la funció de mur de contenció. Els quatre nivells s’organitzen en dues crugies: la més gran allotja l’aparcament (planta baixa), el dormitori principal (planta primera), el menjador (planta segona) i la sala d’estar (planta tercera). La més petita allotja un dormitori individual a cada planta. L’escala comunica els carrers inferior i superior a través de tot l’habitatge. -
Catasús House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
The Vinyet neighborhood has a mainly flat topography, and Coderch chose to create a system of domestic spaces in this house, referring exclusively to the large garden of the plot, without any reference to the outside. Thus, the house is configured on a single floor and basically forms an L that embraces the garden. One of the arms of this L includes the bedrooms, while the other contains the dining room and living room. The entrance takes place behind the body of the bedrooms, hidden from the garden, and gives access to a third arm that includes the kitchen and restrooms. All the openings leading to the garden can be opened and practiced flat, or they can be closed with shutters of the same height as the factory-built house. Thus, the house becomes a set of areas on a single level where the garden unifies the main parts of domestic life, while the entrance and services remain hidden at the back and generate their own outdoor spaces. -
FAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: ArchitectureDwellings Johann Sebastian Bach 7Dwellings Johann Sebastian Bach 7
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
The building responds to a program of four apartments per floor of about 200 square meters, in an urban area arranged in isolated blocks and separated by a minimum distance. Coderch takes care of the housing unit’s study and composes a building with two symmetry axes. The block has two equal façades that face the street and the back garden, and two side façades which are also the same. In the layout of the house, all the main rooms – including the bedrooms and bathrooms – are supported by the exterior enclosures, leaving the kitchen and the service rooms in relation to a central inner courtyard. Main and service traffic are well discriminated against, and they only cross at the entrance. The dining room and the living room have a gallery that combines sliding glass, folding awnings and fixed blinds in a lighting and ventilation device which is superimposed on the structure.Rozes House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
La casa es troba en un indret privilegiat, una punta de terra que penetra en el golf de Roses, amb vistes al mar per tres costats. Coderch opta per esglaonar la casa des de l’accés fins a l’extrem més llunyà, tot seguint la topografia de la rocalla en sentit descendent, de manera que tota la casa pren una configuració longitudinal. Al costat de l’accés, un pati organitza dues circulacions al seu voltant: la primera, que dóna al sud-est, conté la seqüència de la sala d’estar, el menjador i la cuina; la segona seqüència conté el garatge i les estances del servei. Totes dues seqüències es retroben en un punt on comença la sèrie de dormitoris, que culmina amb la cambra principal. Així, la casa configura l’orientació disposant totes les estances a llevant i assignant a la banda de ponent el paper de façana posterior, si bé es relaciona amb tot l’indret a través del contacte directe de les terrasses amb la rocalla, fins a arribar ben bé al mar.Antoni Tàpies House and Studio
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
On a long, narrow plot on the outskirts of Gràcia, Coderch conceives a house in which the longitudinal and vertical dimensions are balanced out by fixed elements that break the spatial continuity: basically, two covered courtyards to the right and left of the plot, and two stairs placed transversely. The ground floor forms a broken sequence that goes from the access atrium to the workshop in the bottom, with a double height. The first floor is for the living areas of the house, and the second floor is for the bedrooms. The library forms a separate, weightless body, set back from the street alignment. The house forms a device to make the most of the scant light available through a vertical and horizontal façade of white-painted wooden slats, a light that reaches the interior, always absorbed by some facings that leave the dark tone of the brick factory visible.FAD Award
Finalist. Category: ArchitectureAntoni Tàpies House and StudioLuque House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Coderch solves the gentle slope of the land by means of a difference in level on which the house straddles. Upstairs there is the entrance and parking, a group of two bedrooms and the master bedroom with its study. Downstairs there are two more bedrooms, the day rooms and the wing where the kitchen and service rooms are located. The bedrooms located to the north follow the recess arrangement and the staggered section. Each different use of the house has its own façade, clearly separated from the others by means of the extension of the walls. Facing northeast, the house seeks light through a transversal axis that goes from the parking lot to the living room, and which has as its main element an interior patio that allows the entrance of light. This patio becomes a central nucleus that organises all circulations, so that the life of the house revolves around its luminosity.Brisamar House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat
It is a single-family house located in an urbanisation next to Coma-ruga beach, intended for tourist use. The house adapts to the dimensions and ordinances of the plot and is resolved according to the typical scheme of arranging the living and dining rooms on the ground floor and the bedrooms on the upper floor, providing it with terraces and covered outdoor spaces, both on the front and back, more sheltered and private for the development of summer activities. The functional and formal features of the author are clearly distinguished in its balanced volumetry, in the austerity in the use of materials and in the arrangement and resolution of the exterior openings with the use of a special closing for solar protection and darkening. The observable changes with respect to the project, probably accepted by the author, are worth mentioning, consisting of the suppression of a small front body intended for showers and the extension of the upper terrace to the most advanced front façade. You can also see the addition of external stairs for access to the terraces on the first floor.Gili House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
The peculiarity of the program leads Coderch to rehearse an unprecedented distribution organisation, on a plot neighbouring the Catasús house, built ten years earlier. From the entrance you reach a distributor connected to a patio that gives light to the central areas, and which is conceived as a semi-covered greenhouse. From here you can access the garden through a small porch, and the bedroom area through a second, completely independent distributor. The living room has its back to the parking plot and adopts a fairly closed configuration, although facing south and the garden. The dining room takes on special importance, being in the visual axis that crosses the whole house, from the bedrooms to the opposite façade, where there is a second semi-covered patio. Coderch conceives an L-shaped house, with a large central axis, in which the situation of each room is determined by its intrinsic configuration and by the position it occupies in the general circulation system.Rovira House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat
Casa Rovira is built for families with two brothers, on a plot located in a garden-city area, bordering a rocky massif 40 m above the sea, with views to Canet beach and Roca de la Catel. The set forms two staggered volumes with breaks that facilitate adaptation to the abrupt topography of the terrain. Unity is achieved through patios and porches, their setback geometries and the staircase that connects them. The permeability of the façade is high when the visual vector is directed to the horizon and zero when connected to the street. Regarding the spatial scheme, the service area and the resting area are articulated in an L shape, with the rooms located in the concavity, while the main lobby forms its corner as an articulation. Its spatial arrangement is part of an experimental line that would begin in the Ferrer Vidal house and end in the Luque House. The Rovira House is a clear variation of the Uriach house. Coderch adapts the same scheme of relations to the new framework that was presented in the Canet de Mar plot. However, Casa Rovira presents a greater definition in its limits, since it has to adjust to more restricted circumstances, the architect himself declared that those conditions were more exciting. The structure is made up of a system of unidirectional reinforced concrete slabs supported on walls and pillars. On the outside, the façade is covered with lime plaster and the floors are made up of ceramic tiles arranged in a herringbone pattern, the openings are screened by white booklet blinds. All this provides it with that Mediterranean house style that supports the living tradition that Coderch insistently defends.L'Olivera Building
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat
Built close to the Girasol building in Madrid, this is one of the first works in which Coderch applies the recessed plan typology in the form of a comb, which will be developed in subsequent larger-scale actions in the housing complexes for Urquijo Bank and of the Garages of Sarrià in Barcelona. The building is developed in three bodies of four heights and two apartments per floor, all of them oriented towards the south and the sea. The location, quite far away from the coastline, and the relative density of the urban area within the area of tourist use where it is located, allow the adoption of criteria similar to those of the blocks in urban planning, both in the building typology and in that of the apartments, with a living-dining room, terrace, three bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and laundry room, identical to that of the conventional residential unit. The large terraces that cover the entire width of the living areas stand out, as well as the provision of communal outdoor space with gardens and a swimming pool, elements typical of the complex's holiday destination and second home. The austere treatment of the façades – all of them made of exposed brick with windows of the same size – which incorporate fixed glass in the sill area to increase the light in the bedrooms, accentuates the powerful volumetry of the building and the author's characteristic formal canons.FAD Award
Finalist. Category: ArchitectureTrade BuildingsTrade Buildings
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
Coderch very clearly differentiates the ground floor are with the emerging volumes in height in a place located in the outskirts of Barcelona, with large, isolated buildings. In response to a large tertiary program, it projects an organism consisting of four four-leaf towers with very smooth curves and counter-curves. Three of the towers share the first two floors, with a perimeter that embraces them in a large unifying plinth. The curtain wall’s modulation is very narrow to allow turns and counterturns, and the modules travel around the perimeter following a sawtooth pattern. In the centre of each tower, the vertical communication cores are embraced by four large concrete pillars, complemented by series of equidistant metal pillars. The image provided by the towers expresses the mobility of a sector of the city which is marked by major traffic routes and isolated buildings.Soler-Badia House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat
A diferència d'altres cases de Coderch, i incidint en la seva particulatirat tipològica i la cerca d'un model, la llar no està en la direcció de l'eix visual des del vestíbul sino que gira 90º en una estança previa, quedant el saló final, com un trànsit informal entre l'habitatge i el jardí. La llar té contacte amb l'exterior a partir d'una petita obertura en el mur que la tanca perpendicularment, mentre que el jardí de la zona comú queda separat pel mur en angle que aguanta el porxo que s'orienta, igual que l'estar, cap a sud.Güell House
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat
Built in 1971, the Güell House is the last of the whole series of experiments with single-family housing that Coderch carried out throughout his professional career. The commission, located in the La Bonanova district of Barcelona, presents variations with respect to its more immediate precedents (Casa Zóbel and Entrecanales), given the particularities of the plot. Elongated and sloping, it forces you to consider the distributive organisational chart in parallel; the services remaining in the north-west wing, the rooms are located symmetrically with respect to the axis of the living room. The condition of the plot forces you to enter down the stairs, which with the volumes of the second floor (suite, garage) manage to give the feeling of entering the house through a crack. The idea of the hall has been blurred, and from the hall there is no longer the visual axis reference; the route leads to the unidirectionality that faces the illuminated wall of the hall, and the direct notion of the garden is lost. These small variations, in a domino effect, condition other aspects so far visible in the other single-family homes. The dining room's own patio has been removed, and the prominent position of the living room with respect to the rest is observed in order to collect as much sun as possible, because the slope goes against the optimal lighting conditions. The cladding has stopped being revoked and changes to adapt to a more urban environment, despite the residential nature of the La Bonanova neighbourhood. The walls have been left exposed with manual brick, while the edge of the forgings has been covered with flat ceramic pieces.Banco Urquijo Housing Complex
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
The project of an open-plan residential complex allows Coderch to define his conception of urban housing. The floors are grouped in pairs in three-storey blocks and form a set of six blocks arranged in a double axis of symmetry. The ground floors absorb the 5.5-metre drop between Raset and Freixa Streets, avoid shops on the façade and house offices separate from the street. The semi-public space between the six blocks is part of the same architectural landscape, determined by the cladding’s small tiles, the vertical blinds of exposed wood and the combination of the enclosures with profuse vegetation. The house extrapolates the stepped floor plan of the previous detached houses. A structure based on straight metal feet and reticular slabs allows to cut the perimeters of the slabs and distribute the surfaces regardless of structural requirements.Les Cotxeres de Sarrià Housing Complex
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat
‘Les Cotxeres’ was perhaps the strongest demonstration of Coderch’s conviction that quality urbanism must have its origins in an architectural concept that is also of high quality. These two stairs are joined in a particularly convincing way in the indented setback of ‘Les Cotxeres’ floor. Firstly, in the resulting block in plan and section, and secondly in terms of the modulated microspace of each home’s interior. Antifrontal by definition, ‘Les Cotxeres’ reaffirms itself as a new urban paradigm that is able to intervene between the suburban middle-class ideal of detached houses with gardens and the traditional urban form of a continuous terrace that defines the street. In this case, the street is subtly supported by a plinth that completes the block located one meter above the level of the sidewalk. This plinth, which contains the underground car park below, forms the grounds of a community garden that embraces each of the residential units – a set of seven floor blocks – as if it were the backbone of the whole complex. In a way, ‘Les Cotxeres’ might seem like an adaptation of the boulevards à redans by Eugène Hénard from 1910, since, while subverting the corridor street, the Hénard’s secluded block still maintained, however, the continuity of the avenue. Three aspects deserve our attention as we move from the block’s configuration to the spatial articulation of the dwellings. Firstly, the ergonomic way in which the interior space unfolds when one passes from the entrance hall to the living/dining room sequence and to the concatenation of stepped rooms that open in a jagged sequence towards the street. Secondly, the fact that each bedroom has its own balcony to grow plants. And thirdly and most crucial of all from the point of view of its social accessibility, the coating of the entire surface with a precise brickwork. All these attributes bear witness to the continued validity of Coderch’s bucolic approach, amid all the vain and spectacular confusions that attend our contemporary era.FAD Award
Finalist. Category: ArchitectureGüell HouseFAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: ArchitectureBanco Urquijo Housing ComplexFAD Award
Finalist. Category: ArchitectureLes Cotxeres de Sarrià Housing ComplexFrench Institute of Barcelona
José Antonio Coderch de Sentmenat, Manuel Valls i Vergés
It is a clear example of Coderch's conceptions of urban architecture, this time applied to a scholar and cultural building. The plot is occupied in its entirety by two underground floors and a ground floor, while the remaining eight floors form a very clear prism, set back from the street and separated from neighbouring buildings. The image of this prism from the different points of view of the street means that the design of the building has focused mainly on the skin of the façade. The reinforced concrete pillars are absorbed into the thickness of the skin, and the openings, very slender and located on the outside, accentuate the smooth appearance of the ceramic coating and offer a light and nuanced light inside. The result is a large, smooth volume that clearly assumes its urban role and is shown as a fragment of a city that cares, above all, about its position and the open spaces it generates.FAD Award
Finalist. Category: ArchitectureFrench Institute of BarcelonaFAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: ArchitectureExtension of the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB)Archive
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Drawing
Perspectiva de l'interior de la Casa Senillosa.
© Fons Correa Milá Arquitectes / Arxiu Històric del COAC
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Drawing
Perspectiva de l'interior de la Casa Senillosa.
© Fons Correa Milá Arquitectes / Arxiu Històric del COAC
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