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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.
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Project by: 
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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
Located between Barcelona’s airport and the city, the Torres Fira project becomes the access portal to the new exhibition centre in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Responding to its environment and taking advantage of the plot's strategic position between two major projects -Plaça Europa and Fira 2000-, acting as a gateway and bridge between the two, is its main priority. The office building, with an orthogonal geometry, is placed perpendicular to the vertebral axis of Plaça Europa, projected at 30º with respect to Gran Via, it transforms into an end for the square and dialogues with the limit located symmetrically on the other corner of Gran Via (two orthogonal towers perpendicular to this axis). The hotel uses a similar language: the building.
With a subtle clover-shaped plant, it rotates as it grows and its top opens like a flower. The complex is made up of a tower that turns on itself, and during its movement it greets the city, the airport, Plaça Europa and the fairgrounds – its perception changing as it surrounds it. This perception is complemented by the second tower, which at first glance is a pure volume, but which contains a core that also rotates on itself, a reflection of the other tower.
The two towers connect the Fira with Plaça Europa, an urban space that definitively connects the city of L'Hospitalet with the Gran Via, to which it had always turned its back. Plaça Europa defines a system of towers around its perimeter. The hotel and office building follow this plan and at the same time serve as a gateway to the Fira’s grounds, located just across the street, where there is a pavilion also designed by Toyo Ito.
The two towers are of identical height. One has a sinuous, continuous, variable, organic contour and contains the Porta Fira hotel. The other is a glass prism that marks all the floors and contains offices. The feature that ties them together is the shape of the hotel tower, which is repeated inside the office tower forming its core of elevators and stairs. The core of the office building moves to the façade facing the hotel and is cut by the exterior façade, so that the whole is perceived as one volume that repeats itself inside the other.
The hotel (and the core of the office building) is a striking dark red. The outer skin is made up of lacquered metal tubes, completely rectilinear, arranged close to each other to form the curved geometry of the exterior. They are cut floor to floor and when they meet the windows of the rooms, arranged irregularly throughout the shaft. The hotel has a very spectacular expansion at the top.
The two towers are linked by a plinth of a good size and very attractive design. They are born from the inside of the plinth, away from the street where it lines up. The interior spaces, with overhead light or poured into the fully glazed perimeter, are remarkable.
The complex presents really attractive views from afar (from the airport, for example) that are worth discovering and appreciating.
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Porta Fira Towers
b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, Toyo Ito, Fermín Vázquez Huarte-Mendicoa
Located between Barcelona’s airport and the city, the Torres Fira project becomes the access portal to the new exhibition centre in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. Responding to its environment and taking advantage of the plot's strategic position between two major projects -Plaça Europa and Fira 2000-, acting as a gateway and bridge between the two, is its main priority. The office building, with an orthogonal geometry, is placed perpendicular to the vertebral axis of Plaça Europa, projected at 30º with respect to Gran Via, it transforms into an end for the square and dialogues with the limit located symmetrically on the other corner of Gran Via (two orthogonal towers perpendicular to this axis). The hotel uses a similar language: the building. With a subtle clover-shaped plant, it rotates as it grows and its top opens like a flower. The complex is made up of a tower that turns on itself, and during its movement it greets the city, the airport, Plaça Europa and the fairgrounds – its perception changing as it surrounds it. This perception is complemented by the second tower, which at first glance is a pure volume, but which contains a core that also rotates on itself, a reflection of the other tower. -
FAD Award
Shortlisted. Category: Architecture
Related Works (5)
Set Planejament i Urbanització de la Plaça Europa
