How to get there
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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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 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.
Detached building, separated from the neighbours by two side gardens, but with ordinances that require road alignment. The distribution is very rational: it has four houses per floor, one on each corner, and a large central courtyard where the laundry and service areas are ventilated, and which are hidden from the outside. The bedrooms and living areas, in contact with the four façades, are distributed around this service core. The structure is made of load-bearing walls which are perpendicular to the street and this causes two very different situations: the side façades are much blinder, with small flush windows on the outside of the wall, while the front façades are much more permeable to light and ventilation. In these façades, the edges of the slabs have been advanced to accommodate the guides of two types of sliding enclosures: the sunscreens of the bedrooms and the windows of the living rooms, which fly outside the terrace. In front of the terraces, a double façade of shutters that give privacy and were already present in the Barceloneta building has been incorporated. The ground floor, of commercial premises, has been unified with an enclosure of folding doors made of high quality wood. He received the FAD Architecture Award in 1960 for this project.
This group of houses constitutes an isolated block and is built near Turó Park, following the line of high standing houses that characterise this new high part of Barcelona, which begins precisely on this street in order to grow in the direction of the mountains.
The entrance is made using the lobby as a vehicle access porch, recovering the experience of single-family homes. The most characteristic trait of this project lies in the disposition of the accesses to the house: each house has its particular elevator that accesses the flats directly, so that these can be organised around it and at the same time it is the axis of the circulations that it generates. Thus, in one of the lateral wings we can find the bedrooms, while centrally we find the fireplace, in a lateral relationship with the dining room. The service area is serviced by a separate lift for routine supply tasks that are segregated, in direct contact with the kitchen and pantry.
The experience gained in the Barceloneta's houses is transferred here with the inclusion of the shutters, which cover the openings and more significantly those of the terrace that serve the dining room and living room. In this one, within the orthogonality and order of the set, the concept of viewpoint and gallery is recovered, emphasising the singularity in an inclined projection of 45º that resembles a small tribune.
Unlike the Casa de la Marina complex, the other material used in the façade is exposed brick, and instead of vertical strips, the complex is expressed horizontally by the protruding concrete slabs on each floor.
Authors
On the Map
Constellation
Cronology
-
FAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: Architecture
Dwellings 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.
