Intro

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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.

Aureli Mora i Omar Ornaque
Directors arquitecturacatalana.cat

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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
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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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Memory

The building is located on the block of houses bounded by Casp, Bailèn, Girona and Ausiàs Marc Streets, opening its façade to the corner created by the last two streets. Located on a polygonal plot - the result of its chamfered arrangement-, it has a regular floor plan with outbuildings organised around several interior or open-air courtyards. It consists of five levels: ground floor, mezzanine, main floor and two more landings, all covered by a passable flat roof.

This large building is part of a construction type very common at the end of the 19th century, the houses of the upper bourgeoisie on the right side of the Eixample. Built within Eclecticism, but with clear classicist inspiration, it is one of the first works of the Barcelona architect Enric Sagnier.

The ground floor is laid out almost like a basement, where the main access portal to the interior of the building is located, other doors from former commercial spaces, now closed for offices, and several windows on two levels. The main door opens on the chamfer and is perfectly delimited by large ashlar pilasters that frame it and which, together with the corbels that crown it and support the main balcony, constitute the only remarkable decoration on this level. These corbels are decorated with vegetal motifs with very sober lines and present on each side two elements that, like a shield, present in the central part two letters "A" and "R" corresponding to the initials of the developer of the property: Antoni Rogent. However, above these there are two bands or strips arranged diagonally where the date of construction of the building, "1888", is recorded.

This ground floor, as already mentioned, has three levels of height, corresponding to the ground floor itself, a basement and a mezzanine that opens onto the street with small windows with convex depressed arch lintels that rests on uprights that imitate half-columns of fluted wood.

The rest of the upper levels are clearly differentiated from this lower body through a cornice created by the overhangs of the balconies on the main floor that are arranged from side to side of the façade. This main floor combines several types of balconies, in cantilever and stone railing (in the chamfer), flanked with stone railing (on either side of the central balcony of the chamfer) and flanked with iron railing (on the façade open to Ausiàs Marc).

Given the existence of three pediments corresponding to the adaptation of the property to the chamfer, there are two types of windows; the ones in the corner, with richly sculpted lintels with vegetal motifs, framed by pilasters and crowned by an entablature with a smooth central shield and those on the façades facing Girona and Ausiàs Marc Streets. These latter are simpler with a smooth entablature that rests on columns that make up the uprights of the window. This model varies slightly on the sides of the chamfer façade, which is delimited by two elements of semicircular plan and towered structure that give plasticity to the intersection of the three pediments. These vertical bodies are finished with a crowning of battlements which - together with the two upper levels - complete the decorative sobriety of the whole.

As for the second floor, the windows recover the medieval model of crown windows with handle but with decorative lines adapted to the architectural trend of the end of the 19th century. The lintel is framed by a kind of pilasters that extend towards the upper floor, where a gallery of windows develops between fluted shaft pilasters. Above this floor there is a space that corresponds to the area of "dead ceiling partitions" that allow the development of the upper Catalan roof (flat roof). This body makes it possible to create a kind of decorative strip on the façade that is decorated with florets and openings on the chamfer and the side façades with a border of classicist lines.

As for the interior of the complex, the entrance is through a polygonal hall of great dimensions and height. Access is made to a first hall with a coffered ceiling that is separated from the large central hall through tall pilasters with a plant capital (in the form of a tax). The large central space is covered by a circular skylight and stands out especially for the cantilevered gallery with iron railing that surrounds the space and is accessed via the monumental staircase on one side of the hall. On the second floor, the former main floor of the estate, the gallery with columns, much of the hydraulic flooring, the original carpentry and some plaster ceilings are still preserved.

The building is currently home to the School of Public Administration of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) and each level has been adapted to the needs of the centre. Thus, the registry, the library and the meeting room are located on the ground floor. On the main floor several classrooms and two spaces known as the "Blue Room" and the "Council Room" are located. On the other levels there are more classrooms and the cafeteria.

The so-called Blue Room is currently located on the second floor of the School of Public Administration of Catalonia, originally the main building. This rectangular space still retains much of the decoration of the original architectural project, such as the wooden ceiling with rounded corners that presents panels painted with landscape decoration of orientalist influence. The room has four double-leaf wooden doors - two on each of the longer sides - and is presided over by a pink marble fireplace with distinctly classicist lines. One of these doors communicates with a small corridor that leads to a small space that functions as a distributor of a series of spaces around it. This space is particularly notable for the magnificent plaster ceiling with moldings and plant elements that are inscribed on a beige background.

The Council Room is another of the preserved spaces of the old main floor of the house, where the molded and gilded wooden ceiling stands out, with two figurative representations inscribed on a semicircular background in the short sections of the forging. The walls, painted in a light shade, have a series of smooth panels framed by partially gilded wooden moldings that follow the type of decoration used on the ceiling. The hydraulic pavement has a rather complex composition that describes - within the obligatory geometry of the tiles - plant elements.

The Roger family was the owner of a large plot of land that extended over a plot formed by Ausiàs Marc and Girona Streets. In 1888, two of the brothers began the construction of three residential buildings, commissioned to the architect Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia.

Antoni Roger promoted the construction of two of the buildings, one at 22 Girona Street and another - the one on this file - located at 33-35 Ausiàs Marc Street.

One of the most relevant elements of this building is precisely the solution of the chamfered façade as well as the original hall of the house, where the height and transparency are the most characteristic aspects. This building was one of the first projects of the architect Enric Sagnier, which is why it still has constructive and decorative elements that are part of the eclectic trend, although with a certain classicist tendency.

At the beginning of the 20th century, this house was home to the renowned Granados Academy (later the Marshall Academy) of the composer and pianist Enric Granados, who lived there. On the façade of the chamfer, a sculpted bronze plaque, the work of the sculptor Borrell Nicolau paid for by the Royal Artistic Circle, has been preserved since 1918 - at the height of the mezzanine level - with an inscription of Apelles Mestres which says: "THIS HOUSE IS THE / LAST / WHERE / THE MASTER / ENRIC / GRANADOS/ LIVED/ GLORY OF THE / SPANISH MUSIC / BORN IN LLEIDA / ON JULY XXVII / OF MCCMLXVII / HE AND HIS WIFE / DIED IN THE CANAL / OF LA MANCHA / VICTIMS OF / THE TORPEDO / OF SUSSEX / XXIV MARC OF MCMXVI / THE "ARTISTIC CIRCLE" / I DEDICATE THIS MEMORY TO HIM".

Currently and since the year 2000, it is home to the School of Public Administration of Catalonia, an autonomous body of an administrative nature, founded in 1912, attached to the Department of Government and Public Administrations of the Generalitat of Catalonia.

Source: Inventari del Patrimoni Arquitectònic de Catalunya (IPAC)

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