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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.
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.
On August 7, 1957, Antoni de Moragas drew up a project to reform a warehouse that was half finished for the church of Sant Jaume, in Badalona.
The existing structure, a rectangular warehouse with a roof that was not yet completed, responds to a project from 1947, in the report of which the following description appears: "On a plot of land that faces Marquès de Mont-roig Street, from Badalona, it is planned to build a ground floor intended for storage. The construction will be made with brick factory walls with lime mortar and the roof with reinforcements and wooden straps, on top of which corrugated sheets of fiber cement will be supported and fixed. The pavement will be built with concrete [...].”
The priest of the parish of Sant Jaume, for economic reasons, proposes to Moragas the reuse of the existing warehouse to build a church, in a working-class neighbourhood of Badalona. The project, therefore, marked by a very tight budget, respects and assumes as value the industrial character of the building and the neighbourhood.
The functional program adapts to the existing plant. Thus, the room is illuminated through the existing openings on the side façade, to which Moragas adapts shutters of swinging timbers - which protrude from the inner face of the wall by means of special frames -, protected by external lattices composed of square ceramic pieces.
The heart, accessible via a wooden staircase, of which the metal tube railing present in the project was not built, is a structure composed of beams and wooden beams, with a floor, which is also a floor, of wooden planks.
The baptistery, delimited by a grid of hexagonal ceramic pieces, has the same stone pavement present in the altar, while the floor of the room is made of tiles, the same material used to cover the walls of the church and also for the plinth, the bench and the back of the bench on the main façade.
The wall of the altar and the tabernacle are covered with vertical wooden slats, which are also used for the fixed modules of the carpentry of the main façade and the access to the room.
In addition to the metal railing with wooden handrail, the transition between the room and the altar is resolved by changes in the pavement (ceramic and stone), accentuated by steps (solid brick, placed on the corner, and of solid granite).
The canopy is made up of two overhanging wooden beams, embedded in the wall of the tabernacle and supported on the armor at the other end, by means of metal braces, and of beams that support micro-perforated tablex plates, the same as those on the roof of the ship.
The most consistent intervention is on the main façade. Antoni de Moragas respects the symmetry of the existing façade, placing the bell tower on axis with the access, while the rest of the elements he introduces to the façade tend towards an asymmetrical composition (although the carpentry of the heart was not finally executed according to the project).
The few elements used—fixed lead enclosures, uralite roof and the reinforced concrete bell tower that supports the cross, made with the armor of two crossed hoops—follow the “industrial” aesthetic logic of the project.
The church has undergone some modifications: the yellow glass and the baptistery window have been replaced by stained glass; the ceramic floor, for sandstone; the staircase, the altar rail and the lattice of the baptistery have disappeared, and another stainless steel one has been superimposed on the cross. Although a simple restoration intervention would be enough to return it to its original state, at present it is affected by a demolition file and by a project that aims to build a block of houses on the façade that faces to the street, and which would push back the church, whose access would be located on the side façade.
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