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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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:
2019-2023 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 first proposal for the reconstruction of the German pavilion was made in Mies van der Rohe by Group R, which received an enthusiastic response from the architect, but the project did not prosper due to the Administration’s disinterest. There is a second proposal by Joan Bassegoda i Nonell from 1964, and ten years later Professor Fernando Ramos organised a seminar to get to know the building in detail, as there was almost no project originally. The final proposal was born in 1981, when some scholars and historians already had a fair knowledge of the archived materials in Barcelona, Berlin, New York and Chicago. This knowledge, in addition to some working hypotheses and the analysis of the remains found in the same place, could guarantee the rigorous fidelity of the reconstruction, based on the original building and not so much on the redrawn plans that Mies had done on behalf of Werner Blaser. Reconstruction differs from the original in aspects such as roof waterproofing, water collection or security. The building is currently the Mies van der Rohe Foundation headquarters and functions as a conference room for small events.
We are aware that we have had an exceptional experience. As architects, we have faced the reconstruction of a paradigmatic building of twentieth-century architecture. We started from the background of various trainings and experiences. We found the singularity of a reconstruction for which there was abundant information about what we were going to rebuild, but not enough to establish, without any doubt, what characteristics the mythical Miesian building had had.
Our work has been a project. But an atypical project insofar as research, critical decisions and technical solutions have had a different relationship than usual to conventional architectural projects.
Authors
On the Map
Constellation
Cronology (7)
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German Pavilion of the 1929 International Exhibition
The German pavilion represents a new way of conceiving space, and it is completely different from the traditional one and consistent with the possibilities offered by the new metal pillar structures. Mies takes this constructive innovation to the limit of its visual possibilities, allowing the enclosing walls to be freely distributed throughout the floor plan. Another remarkable aspect of the pavilion is the selection of high-quality materials and very intense colours, as well as the introduction of two sheets of water in the exterior spaces. Bruno Zevi carries out an investigation where he aesthetically places the architecture of the pavilion within neo-plasticism, an anti-classical movement which Mies belonged to. The dynamism of the horizontal and vertical planes of the pavilion clearly responds to the aesthetic principles of this avant-garde movement and is clearly opposed to the static conception of Greco-Roman art. The pavilion should be read as a manifesto that will determine all of Mies's latter architecture and will influence successive generations of modern architects. However, the Catalan architects of the Republic had already taken sides with Le Corbusier and the CIAM, and the influence of Mies would have to wait until the 1950s. Contrary to general opinion, this pavilion should also be read as a new housing prototype that Mies has successively presented at different international exhibitions: the Glasraum in Stuttgart, 1927; the German Pavilion in Barcelona, 1929; and the House for a Bachelor in Berlin, 1931. All of them are variations of a new typology of courtyard houses. In the 1950s, Oriol Bohigas contacted Mies van der Rohe to rebuild the Barcelona pavilion. Mies gave his consent and was willing to carry it out personally; however, he did not authorise the reconstruction of the monument to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg because he did not respect the original location. Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Fernando Ramos and Cristián Cirici completed the reconstruction in 1986, on the centenary of Mies' birth. -
Reconstruction of the German Pavilion
Cristian Cirici i Alomar, Fernando Juan Ramos Galino, Ignasi de Solà-Morales i Rubió
The first proposal for the reconstruction of the German pavilion was made in Mies van der Rohe by Group R, which received an enthusiastic response from the architect, but the project did not prosper due to the Administration’s disinterest. There is a second proposal by Joan Bassegoda i Nonell from 1964, and ten years later Professor Fernando Ramos organised a seminar to get to know the building in detail, as there was almost no project originally. The final proposal was born in 1981, when some scholars and historians already had a fair knowledge of the archived materials in Barcelona, Berlin, New York and Chicago. This knowledge, in addition to some working hypotheses and the analysis of the remains found in the same place, could guarantee the rigorous fidelity of the reconstruction, based on the original building and not so much on the redrawn plans that Mies had done on behalf of Werner Blaser. Reconstruction differs from the original in aspects such as roof waterproofing, water collection or security. The building is currently the Mies van der Rohe Foundation headquarters and functions as a conference room for small events. -
FAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: Intervencions Efímeres
Columnes Commemoratives dels 30 Anys de la Reconstrucció del Pavelló Alemany a BarcelonaFAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: Intervencions EfímeresMies Missing MaterialityFAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner (opinion). Category: Intervencions EfímeresMies Missing Materiality
