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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.
About us
Project by: 
Created by: 
Directors:
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:
Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de CulturaCollaborating Entities:
ArquinFADFundació 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
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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.
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Works (9)
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Chronology (13)
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Ferrándiz House
Es tracta d’una casa d’estiueig per a un client que viu fora de Catalunya. La casa es configura en dos pavellons situats en parallel i separats per un pati, que fa alhora de distribuïdor i d’espai obert de la casa. Un dels pavellons allotja les activitats de dia i l’altre, els dormitoris. La casa recull alguns elements tradicionals de la construcció mediterrània, com ara pati i la terrassa, si bé també es recolza en un eix central d’articulació, marcat pel pati i pel desguàs de l’estany. Els procediments constructius emprats pertanyen a la tradició del país i estan molt condicionats per la inexperiència del contractista. -
Moll de la Barceloneta Quay Promenade
Rafael de Cáceres Zurita, Jordi Henrich i Monràs, Olga Tarrasó Climent
The promenade of Moll de la Barceloneta next to Moll de la Fusta materialises the idea of a perimeter crown that surrounds the Old Port as an urban element at the scale of the city. The project is arranged as a large linear space, maintaining its vocation for a promenade linked to Barceloneta and the Port, and reinforces the concept of empty space in the harbor scale. Thus, the sidewalk on the side of Barceloneta is extended up to 15 metres, recovering the historical configuration of the promenade, improving the relationship between pedestrian space and commercial establishments. There is an underground car park under the driveway. The section of the promenade between the road and the water reflects the change in scale, an eleven-metre sidewalk is related to the side of Barceloneta through groups of trees that break the alignments of the street generating new visuals towards the great areas of the promenade, which open towards the port, marked by groups of palm trees. At the ends are two large, slightly inclined squares as transitional elements with respect to the buildings. -
FAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner (ex aequo). Category: Architecture - Public SpacesRemodelling of Rambla de CatalunyaFAD Award
Finalist. Category: Outdoor SpacesMoll de la Barceloneta Quay PromenadeHeadquarters of the SGAE
Rafael de Cáceres Zurita, Esteve Terradas i Muntañola, Robert Terradas i Muntañola
The headquarters of the SGAE in Barcelona is established on two different buildings in Passeig de Colom and La Mercè Street. The first corresponds to a manor house from the end of the 16th century. The plan is organised around a courtyard, which is reached through a vestibule covered with four-point vaults of low arches. Initially, the entrance is made through La Mercè Street. The urban transformations of the 18th and 19th centuries, which took place on Barcelona's seafront, forced our building to open up to the new space, and to change the direction of the main access. The building typology of the stately building corresponds to the characteristics of the time: carriage entrance and auxiliary outbuildings on the ground floor; main floor with more height and upper floors dedicated to secondary rooms. The second building, without any functional link with the previous one, was dedicated to low-quality housing. The project, in addition to the rehabilitation tasks, has maintained the closed character of the building, opening different points of light inside to facilitate its habitability. The main operations have been: 1. Covering the main courtyard with a skylight to achieve equality between its two entrances. 2. Maintain the role of the main staircase as access to the main floor and open a skylight over it that allows the visual relationship between the floor’s dependencies. 3. Recover the deck as a viewpoint over the port of Barcelona. The fundamental premise of the intervention has been to make the opaque and closed nature of the building compatible with the functional and environmental needs required by an office program. Mainly those of natural lighting and internal interrelation. The project reinforces the contrast between the darkness that we imagine behind the hard façades and the clarity and spatial correspondence that we encounter when we enter the building. The design has not imposed any language unit, but each part of the building has imposed its own conditions. This explains the absence of globalising designs and the taste for diversity in architectural treatment.Premi Ciutat de Barcelona
Menció Especial. Category: Architecture and UrbanismHeadquarters of the SGAEInternational Maritime Stations of the Autonomous Port
The project of the two maritime stations completes the World Trade Center in Barcelona, designed by the architects Pei, Coob, Freed & Partners. This work, not planned initially, was a very complex architectural exercise, as it tried to make the architecture of the maritime stations linked to the language of ships and port facilities compatible with a building already built with a very morphological conception distant from these formal assumptions. The mechanism used to achieve this relationship consisted in the extension of some elements of the construction of the existing building: the architectural concrete walls that give continuity to the base of the two buildings and the use of the language of the carpentry aluminum. Having paid this formal toll, the architecture of the maritime stations is freed from the commitment to the built and expresses itself with the freedom of a conception close to industrial architecture. The geometric rigour, seriation and light expression of the iron structure become the protagonists of the project, in contrast with the heaviness of the existing building. The maritime stations end with the emptiness and shadows of the large entrance porch and the upper pergola that covers the terraces that look out over the city.Rehabilitation of the Former Gasworks to House of the Printing Museum
The project deals with the rehabilitation of the old Gas factory to house the municipal programme of economic promotion and the Municipal Textile Printing Museum. The fact of preserving the pavilion structure of the old factory forced a certain fractioning of the programme. The naves at the entrance were intended to cover the training objectives linked to social promotion, and the other two naves, the museum. The architectural problem to achieve the unity of the museum was solved through the transversal section. This made it possible to establish a double link between the original ships. One, at the lower level, which includes the strict function of a museum, and the other, at the level of the square, which facilitates the visual relationship between both buildings. The double spaces that run lengthwise through the naves house the accesses, as well as providing natural lighting and cross ventilation for the museum. The construction of the lower level is of exposed concrete in walls, ceilings and stairs, differentiating from the exposed brick architecture and traditional techniques close to the language of the old factory. With the longitudinal section and through a garden-courtyard, the underground museum recovers the relationship with the outside and communicates with the upper square.Restoration of El Born Market (Stage 3: Born CC)
Rafael de Cáceres Zurita, Enric Sòria i Badia
The open debate on the Born’s use and the work done on the compatibility between the ruins and the Provincial Library concluded with the municipal decision to propose a Cultural Centre that would incorporate the site as an active part of the new facility. Decided for this purpose, the building attached to the Born was built on 5 Comercial Street, and it becomes essential in order to locate the technical elements of the facilities (air conditioning, power supply, transformer station, etc.). In parallel with the construction of the annex building, a platform was built inside the Old Market to protect the site and to recover the work plan on which to proceed with the restoration and construction of the cultural centre. Broadly speaking, the main restoration tasks focused on the construction of the new roof and its structural consolidation, the restoration of the cast elements (pillars, channels, structural and ornamental elements, the set of the central lantern, the stairs and exterior walkways, the interior staircase for access to the roof, etc.), the closure of façades (cast iron elements, glass, skylights, brick walls, etc.), and the evacuation system of waters. The project included structural operations aimed at reusing the Market as a Cultural Centre, in particular the structure of the slabs that make up the upper level of the site and which is directly related to the outdoor space of the Cultural Centre and the network of stormwater drainage of the whole. In July 2010, the architect Rafael de Cáceres resigned from the work for the reasons set out in the document Carta al Born, which you can find on the blog: http://rafaelcaceresarquitecte.blogspot.com.es/EU Mies Award
NominatedRestoration of El Born Market (Stage 3: Born CC)Bibliography (31)
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