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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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:
2019-2024 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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Memory
The program required the inclusion of a series of very diverse activities on an block of houses in the Eixample, truncated by the intersection of Ribes Street and some existing buildings that had not followed the criteria of building in a certain direction. The project aims to completely rebuild the boundaries of the block of houses and create its own topology. A new square is being created along Ribes Street, which will serve as an access point and reference point for the entire civic centre. From this square you can access the market, the library, the nursery and the civic centre, which are looking for a place in the open spaces of the block of houses, without losing the connection with the square. The student residence and the geriatric residence form a separate body, with access via Sardenya Street, although it folds over itself in order to participate in the space generated by the square. The order of Ribes Street and the new square set out a clear criterion for the location of each part.
The Eixample block located between Sicília, Sardenya, Ali-Bei and Ausiàs March streets has an irregular geometry as a result of its division into two parts along Ribes Street. On the block there is a linear building destined for a Civic Centre, which occupies the main part of it, with a different criterion from the construction system that determines the Eixample’s morphology. The initial arrangement provided for the implementation of other facilities adjacent to this initial and a ground floor building plus five floors with a façade on Sardenya Street does in fact follow the construction criteria of the Eixample Cerdà.
The planned program of facilities around the Civic Centre was a library (which was to share services with the Civic Centre), a Kindergarten, a Primary School, and a Market. In addition, the ground floor building plus five floors facing Sardenya Street was divided into two, one intended for a student residence, privately managed, and another in a Geriatric Residence built by a private Foundation and later handed over to the City Council.
So that the problem to be solved added an atypical boundary geometry in relation to the one defined in the Eixample, inside there was a singular building impossible to "Digest" if the district’s construction criteria were applied, a limit (Sardenya Street) that did meet these criteria and a radically heterogeneous program in terms of the different types of buildings it generated. And an immediate observation when proposing the most obvious solution (building the boundary, as in the whole of the Eixample): the m2 buildable foreseen in the initial arrangement did not give much to extend to these limits the type planned construction in relation to Sardenya Street.
The solution has needed an extreme degree of artificiality and violence in the proposal, to establish common relationships between geometries, building types and radically heterogeneous uses. Basically, the planning criterion has been to ironically subordinate all the buildings to their dependence on Ribes Street (which is being extended in the central section to generate an autonomous, static, square space).
This desire has led us to "plasticise" the geometry of the Geriatric Residence to bend and face this public space, to link (and magnify) all the entrances to this same public space and to work with project instruments that solve the specificities of each use and express their scale (so different between, say, a market and a daycare centre) and at the same time determine common volumetric and material relationships between such a different grouping of buildings.
That is, in the first case, almost domestic architectural instruments; in the second, almost sculptural.
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Fort Pienc Street Block
The program required the inclusion of a series of very diverse activities on an block of houses in the Eixample, truncated by the intersection of Ribes Street and some existing buildings that had not followed the criteria of building in a certain direction. The project aims to completely rebuild the boundaries of the block of houses and create its own topology. A new square is being created along Ribes Street, which will serve as an access point and reference point for the entire civic centre. From this square you can access the market, the library, the nursery and the civic centre, which are looking for a place in the open spaces of the block of houses, without losing the connection with the square. The student residence and the geriatric residence form a separate body, with access via Sardenya Street, although it folds over itself in order to participate in the space generated by the square. The order of Ribes Street and the new square set out a clear criterion for the location of each part. -
Premi Ciutat de Barcelona
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: Architecture and UrbanismFort Pienc Street Block