The Theatre Institute is a teaching building that forms the centrepiece of what was meant to be the Theatre City. It is a complex that recycles a series of palaces built on the Exposició Avenue, at the northern limit of Poble Sec with Montjuïc, built on the occasion of the 1929 Exhibition by the architect Ramon Puig i Gairalt.
The building solves the delivery of these palaces with Poble Sec by closing a square above the elevation of Exposició Avenue and, at the same time, presenting an access to the elevation of Poble Sec, a neighbourhood that reaches the building almost more than one floor below the level of the square.
The building is organised in a U shape around a spectacular patio open to the square, an urban space of a scale difficult to find in Barcelona, configured by a pavilion at the level of the building's cornice line.
The three wings of the U contain diverse and very interesting spaces: the entrance to the building is at the bottom, formed by a double-height vestibule that opens onto the square inside the building. The body of the library is at the right, also organised at double height on the upper floors, a welcoming space that contains an important collection of theatre and film books. The body of the theatre is at the left.
The theatre and dance classrooms of the Institute are remarkable, double-height cubic spaces illuminated from above and served by corridors leading to the hall.
The common spaces of the building are interesting and flow into each other in different dimensions of width and height: the bar serves as the entrance to the theatre and at the same time culminates the lobby, which is poured against the divider of the Mercat de les Flors space with artistic intervention by Frederic Amat.
The whole set is finished with a carefully finished Roman travertine tile. The rear façade, over the Poble Sec, is of special interest because of the double role of the rear façade that faces a neighbourhood with as much history as this one.
The building of the New Headquarters of the Theatre Institute is located within the grounds of the Mercat de les Flors and the Palau de l'Agricultura, together with the Municipal Theatre and the New Headquarters of the Teatre Lliure.
Basically, the program determines two major functional areas. The teaching centre, with the different schools and specialties, and the one of a more public nature or frequently used by people outside the teaching area.
The building was conceived with the intention of not wanting to compete with the character and image established by the existing buildings of the future Teatre Lliure and Teatre del Mercat de les Flors, without giving up, however, the ability to express its own autonomy and modernity dialoguing without violence with the neighbouring architectures.
The void that determines the open atrium-vestibule has been designed in complementarity with the neighbouring architectures, establishing relationships that want to go beyond the formal evidence.
This void, its dimensions and proportions, as well as the façades that formally frame and determine it, are the mechanisms used to endow the building with the public and representative character that it has to achieve, promoting a certain scenographic quality that represents metaphorically the activity of the centre.
The building revolves around this large exterior hall, through which it is connected to Margarida Xirgu Square and the rest of the Ciutat del Teatre. It is where the main accesses to each of the centre's differentiated use areas (Theatres, Teaching Area and Museum-Library-Documentation Centre) are located, and the different volumes that surround it are determined in response to its functional diversity.