Intro

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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.

Aureli Mora i Omar Ornaque
Directors arquitecturacatalana.cat

credits

About us

Project by:

Created by:

Directors:

2019-2024 Aureli Mora i Omar Ornaque

Documental 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 Ornaque

External Collaborators:

2019-2024 Lluis Andreu Sergi Ballester Helena Cepeda Inès Martinel Maria Jesús Quintero

With the support of:

Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de Cultura

Collaborating Entities:

ArquinFAD

 

Fundació 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

Design & Development:

edittio Nubilum
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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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In Pictures

  • Montbau Industrial Estate

  • Montbau Industrial Estate

  • Montbau Industrial Estate

  • Montbau Industrial Estate

  • Montbau Industrial Estate

  • Montbau Industrial Estate

Memory

The Montbau district, located below the Tibidabo, next to Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, has a total area of approximately 31 Ha. The part built today, or in a very advanced stage of construction, consists of two basic residential units. The garden and the neighbourhood park are also practically finished.

A group of about 70 single-family homes in the upper part of the slope is currently under construction, a group that we will not include in the present analysis because it is in a very little advanced phase and, therefore, without specific data. The architect of this group is Joan Bosch.

Who are the authors of Montbau? Here is a first concrete problem that can lead us to general considerations. Due to programming requirements, the Municipal Housing Board decided to commission the architects Guillermo Giráldez, Pedro López and Xavier Subías with the urgency of a very few weeks as a matter of urgency. By what criteria were these architects chosen? Probably for simple reasons of proximity, administrative relationship, circumstantial insufficiency of the technical staff itself, etc.

But was there a concern to choose a good team precisely for one of the largest projects that were then being developed? At least, or was there an awareness that, by chance and for reasons of bureaucratic convenience, he had fallen into the hands of a good team, then with a promising youthful push?

* The original Partial Plan was altered, both in its first phase, slightly, and in the second one, with a change of drafting team and urban planning that substantially modified it.

Author: Oriol Bohigas i Guardiola

The Montbau neighbourhood is part of a new stage of urban action by the Municipal Housing Board (PMV) in which it is proposed to create complete urban centres perfectly differentiated from the rest of the urban fabric, instead of building isolated buildings in a dispersed way, as they had done so far. This made it necessary to act on a large area of land that was only found on the outskirts of Barcelona. Another important change compared to previous actions is the clear commitment to modern architecture. The Montbau project resolves the relationship between the city and the mountain with isolated buildings and segregation of pedestrian traffic from the road. Coinciding with the dates of completion of the project, a congress of municipal technicians was organised in Germany in 1957, in which some members of the PMV participated; they traveled to Frankfurt, Cologne, Bonn and Berlin, and they visited the Interbau and other reconstruction zones. One of the differentiating elements with respect to the previous actions of the PMV and other public promoters is the provision of social facilities and the desire to create a neighbourhood of a certain complexity that reflects social diversity, which involved the construction of a varied housing program with 2, 3, 4 and 5 rooms grouped in towers, blocks and single-family homes. Public and collective spaces also respond to this intention. The initial project was drawn up by the architects Xavier Subías, Pedro López Iñigo and Guillem Giráldez, who followed the postulates of the CIAM. However, the second phase was modified in 1962 by a heterogeneous group of architects who doubled the housing density and defined a more closed urban fabric, with rectangular squares limited by L-shaped blocks. This group of architects was made up of Manel Baldrich, Bonet Castellana, López Iñigo and Soteras. The set of single-family homes on the highest part was designed by Joan Bosch. In 1963 and after Le Corbusier, who was already very old, rejected the commission, a competition was held to build the church of Montbau, which was won by the architects Vayreda and Montguió. According to the architect Fernando Marzá, the impact that the ideas of Bonet Castellana had on the architect Oriol Bohigas when proposing this second denser and more closed plot of urban space would be the turning point that would lead him to propose a new urban planning that was more compact than that of the CIAM.

Author: Xavier Llobet i Ribeiro

Source: DOCOMOMO Ibérico

In 1957, when the planning of the first basic residential unit in the Montbau district was approved, the population of Barcelona was 1,466,937 inhabitants, but only 7 years before the municipal census put it at 1,280,179. These unprecedented levels of growth required a strong response from the city council to the demand and location of this entire population. Since 1927, the Municipal Housing Board has been in charge of promoting, building and managing the city's public housing stock, so it seems logical that this body should be in charge of dealing with this new and urgent issue requirement. It should also be noted that around these dates the so-called International Congress of Modern Architecture arises, better known by its acronym CIAM, founded in Switzerland and led by Le Corbusier. This is a meeting place and debate on such important issues as modern technology and its consequences, standardisation, economics, urban planning, youth education or architecture and the state. One of his proclamations concluded that the problems cities faced could be solved by functional segregation and the distribution of the population in high blocks of flats at widely spaced intervals. The construction of the Montbau housing estate is framed within this local and international context and, thus, reflects this. It is therefore appropriate to recognise this intervention within its historical context along with the many contradictions, the multiplicity of authors and a certain cultural anachronism in which it took place. Planned in two basic stages, the first one (SO) was drafted by Giráldez, López-Iñigo and Subías and approved in 1957. The second stage (NE), approved in 1962, was drafted by Baldrich, Bonet, López and Soteras. Later, in 1964, the construction of detached houses was approved by the architect Agustí Bosch. The parish centre and the church were the buildings that were completed later, in 1975. A competition was called and Monguió i Vayreda’s project won. In terms of planning, and although now the city would not consider an isolated neighbourhood from this point of view, perfectly limited and differentiated from the rest of the urban fabric; at that time it might have seemed logical to adopt a criterion of no retreat in free areas, cheaper and easier to process. From this point of view, we could say that this precise distribution of blocks, towers and single-family homes with large squares, a "commercial strip" on the ground floor and different facilities, built on the slopes of Tibidabo, is presented as a representative example of post-war Barcelona town planning. But this is precisely why its modernity is gaining even more value, as well as its important commitment to the provision of social facilities and the ex-novo recreation of a neighbourhood with a rich complexity and social diversity. The project represented an alignment with the international avant-garde architecture and the present shows us a good experimental reference for future actions in newly created neighbourhoods.

Author: Janice Moret

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Audiovisual

  • “Montbau, 1958-1964. Entre Arquitectura i Harmonia” Converses [29.04.2021]

    1:12:55

    “Montbau, 1958-1964. Entre Arquitectura i Harmonia” Converses [29.04.2021]

Bibliography

Related Works (15)

Set Polígon Montbau

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