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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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

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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 Fargas house is a good example of a late Modernist bourgeois apartment in the Eixample of Barcelona and, at the same time, of Enric Sagnier’s early work, an architect with a very extensive career.
The apartment buildings in the Eixample are stratified in height from the main one (on the ground floor), the owner's home, with apartments that decrease in rent and area for families with lower incomes. The Fargas house, three bays wide (three windows per floor facing the street) has a peculiarity: from the ground floor to the fourth one (the house has five floors on a semi-basement raised almost one floor above the street), the floors have the same façade. The main one is only marked by the union of the side balconies with the central tribune. On the rest of the floors, the balconies are individualised and receive wrought iron railings.
The tribune, in the centre of the house, has two curious features: the main one is that it is formed by the façade of the house, folded in on itself and pierced by a single bombed window, with an irregular, organic perimeter, with very elegant and vertical designer joinery. The second characteristic is that it is misaligned with respect to the access door, located against the right side of the façade, almost in the middle, to leave space for the development of the ground floor and the semi-basement.
The crowning is unique, based on a projected eaves on the two sides of the façade.
The ornamentation, treated with subtlety and mastery, consists of small decorative touches on the windows, the entrance door and the tribune.
The façade has been recently restored and is in a good state of preservation. The interior is private and cannot be visited.

Author: Jaume Prat Ortells

Source: APP BCN Arquitectura

Enric Sagnier's cosmopolitan modernism - inspired, like much contemporary architecture, by the French Rococo - achieves its best results when it forgets about specific models and looks for the logic of free forms. On the façades, the curve of its ornaments takes over the entire composition and, in this case, it even comes to configure a structural element such as the central tribune. The sculptural work on the ground floor fuses the vegetal decoration and the architectural profiling of the openings with a rougher treatment of the stone, simply roughened at the base of the façade. The convex base of the mezzanine windows is a resource that Sagnier will use in other works of the first decade of the century.
The lobby tempers this character a little, although there is no lack of ornamental work (on the iron railing, the sculptural details or the sgraffito on the wall) that was often given to these semi-public spaces.
Originally, the building did not have the current floors added. The tribune consisted of four levels that culminated in a cupule, on both sides of which ran a finial of florets. The fifth floor with low eaves and the last apartment are a sign of the densification of the city, although it should be appreciated that they respected the general character in the shapes of the openings and in the decoration.

Author: Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia

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