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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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:
2019-2023 Aureli Mora i Omar OrnaqueDocumental Commission:
2019-2023 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:
2019-2023 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
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.
Memory
The planning responded to a city model radically different from that of a Mediterranean city and the project found no loophole to change its purposes.
The plan had set a buildability of 32,940 m2 to be divided between three buildings perfectly defined in their maximum occupations, their required heights and their position on the floor. The project focused on optimising habitability in such a rigid and untouchable framework.
In the two towers, the maximum allowable use was taken advantage of because it facilitated the organisation of different sizes and distributions of the houses and the compositional obsession with slenderness was clearly renounced as if it were an indisputable value. Both reached the mandatory maximum height and the excess buildability that would have resulted if all the plants had been equal to the casualties was reduced and adjusted by extractions to the overall volume. Extractions that increased as they gained height and were carried out in areas facing north, in areas without sea views or on the nearest edges between buildings.
In the towers and at each core of stairs and elevators a series of bands were defined that completely wrapped them in the large tower and only on three of its faces in the small one. Of these bands the nearest was the access corridor to the houses. The next one, 50 cm thick, was occupied by pillars and installations. In the widest band, 8 m thick, the houses were distributed without any fixed vertical element and with total freedom to decide sizes and distributions. It was followed by another 50 cm occupied again by installations, pillars and glazed enclosures from floor to ceiling that separated it from the terraces run by 3m of cantilever. Due to its size and the protection from the sun, wind, vacuum and other people's eyes, which were provided by sliding shutters with adjustable aluminum slats, they became another room in the house, a new element of communication between all its pieces, in a generous intermediate space between interior and exterior of a very Mediterranean tradition. And all this is thanks to sensible ordinances that did not penalise terraces with loss of buildability.
In those faces that arose from the extractions carried out in the general volume and in which terraces could not be built, the same compositional elements were used as in the rest of the façades. Cantilevers, railings and shutters were also present, although with other measures and relationships so that the building did not have a front and a back.
The façades of the lower building were treated with the same resources as those of the towers, seeking to confuse and perceive the three buildings as overlapping and perceived as a unique, formless and changing shape.
The building is located on a remaining plot of land in the Diagonal Mar park, which is large and irregular in shape, subject to very strict urban conditions and which did not offer much room for maneuver. Clotet and Paricio decide to dispense with any compositional approach and choose to conform faithfully to the urban guidelines by means of volumes that, on the façade, are treated with the repetition of the same piece. This repetitive element consists of a piece of aluminum and a panel, in the case of the opaque facings located in front of the pillars. The assembly is mounted on pre-frames formed by a 120 x 40 mm galvanised tube framework, which is anchored to the slabs by means of wicks. The shutters are made of adjustable profiled aluminum sheets, mounted on extruded aluminum frames that run through a double guide of the same material. Clotet and Paricio shift the interest in composition to systematic construction detail and create an organism that will only acquire scale and dimensions through the activity of users.
Authors
On the Map
Constellation
Cronology
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Diagonal Mar Dwellings
Clotet, Paricio & Associats, Lluís Clotet i Ballús, Ignacio Paricio i Ansuategui
The planning responded to a city model radically different from that of a Mediterranean city and the project found no loophole to change its purposes. The plan had set a buildability of 32,940 m2 to be divided between three buildings perfectly defined in their maximum occupations, their required heights and their position on the floor. The project focused on optimising habitability in such a rigid and untouchable framework. In the two towers, the maximum allowable use was taken advantage of because it facilitated the organisation of different sizes and distributions of the houses and the compositional obsession with slenderness was clearly renounced as if it were an indisputable value. Both reached the mandatory maximum height and the excess buildability that would have resulted if all the plants had been equal to the casualties was reduced and adjusted by extractions to the overall volume. Extractions that increased as they gained height and were carried out in areas facing north, in areas without sea views or on the nearest edges between buildings. In the towers and at each core of stairs and elevators a series of bands were defined that completely wrapped them in the large tower and only on three of its faces in the small one. Of these bands the nearest was the access corridor to the houses. The next one, 50 cm thick, was occupied by pillars and installations. In the widest band, 8 m thick, the houses were distributed without any fixed vertical element and with total freedom to decide sizes and distributions. It was followed by another 50 cm occupied again by installations, pillars and glazed enclosures from floor to ceiling that separated it from the terraces run by 3m of cantilever. Due to its size and the protection from the sun, wind, vacuum and other people's eyes, which were provided by sliding shutters with adjustable aluminum slats, they became another room in the house, a new element of communication between all its pieces, in a generous intermediate space between interior and exterior of a very Mediterranean tradition. And all this is thanks to sensible ordinances that did not penalise terraces with loss of buildability. In those faces that arose from the extractions carried out in the general volume and in which terraces could not be built, the same compositional elements were used as in the rest of the façades. Cantilevers, railings and shutters were also present, although with other measures and relationships so that the building did not have a front and a back. The façades of the lower building were treated with the same resources as those of the towers, seeking to confuse and perceive the three buildings as overlapping and perceived as a unique, formless and changing shape. -
FAD Award
Finalist. Category: Architecture
Diagonal Mar DwellingsClotet, Paricio & Associats, Lluís Clotet i Ballús, Ignacio Paricio i Ansuategui
EU Mies Award
ShortlistedDiagonal Mar DwellingsClotet, Paricio & Associats, Lluís Clotet i Ballús, Ignacio Paricio i Ansuategui