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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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 Eduard Callís Francesc Rafat Pau Albert Antoni López Daufí Joan Falgueras Mercè Bosch Jaume Farreny Anton Pàmies Juan Manuel Zaguirre Josep Ferrando Fernando Marzá Moisés Puente Aureli Mora Omar Ornaque

Collaborators:

2019-2024 Lluis Andreu Sergi Ballester Maria Jesús Quintero Lucía M. Villodres

External Collaborators:

2019-2024 Helena Cepeda Inès Martinel

With the support of:

Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de Cultura

Collaborating Entities:

ArquinFAD

 

Fundació Mies van der Rohe

 

Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico

 

Basílica de la Sagrada Família

 

Museu del Disseny de Barcelona

 

Fomento

 

AMB

 

EINA Centre Universitari de Disseny i Art de Barcelona

 

IEFC

 

Fundació Domènench Montaner.

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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Informació bàsica de protecció de dades

Responsable del tractament: Col·legi d Arquitectes de Catalunya 'COAC'
Finalitat del tractament: Tramitar la sol·licitud de còpies digitals dels documents dels quals l’Arxiu Històric del COAC gestiona els drets d'explotació dels autors, a més d'aquells que es trobin en domini públic.
Legitimació del tractament: El seu consentiment per tractar les seves dades personals.
Destinatari de cessions o transferències: El COAC no realitza cessions o transferències internacionals de dades personals.
Drets de les persones interessades: Accedir, rectificar i suprimir les seves dades, així com, l’exercici d’altres drets conforme a l’establert a la informació addicional.
Informació addicional: Pot consultar la informació addicional i detallada sobre protecció de dades en aquest enllaç

Awarded
Cataloged
Disappeared
All works
  • 1885 - 1888

  • 1888

  • Pavelló Audouard

    autoria desconeguda

  • Coffee-Restaurant of the 1888 International Exhibition

    Lluís Domènech i Montaner

    Coffee-Restaurant of the 1888 International Exhibition

    The building highlights new architectural values as part of the first Universal Exhibition. It consists of a large dining room and a cafe on the ground floor, a rectangular box with folded façades, so that the exterior image of the building is modeled independently of the interior requirements. The four corners are highlighted by four towers with different crowns. The structure responds to a rigorous application of the brick and iron factory, protagonists of the new architecture. The relationship between the ornamentation and the structure is also clearly resolved: the battlements of the outer wall surround the building accompanied by glazed ceramic shields with airtight inscriptions. This is the first building-manifesto of modernism, which shows some guidelines that later other architects will apply to more complex programs.

    1887 - 1892

  • 1916

  • 1927

  • 1923 - 1928

  • 1928

  • 1926 - 1929

  • Palace of the Graphic Arts

    Raimon Duran i Reynals, Pelayo Martínez Paricio

    Palace of the Graphic Arts

    The palace is located on a steeply sloping site, which served to centralise the access in the middle of two curved ramps that converge. The organisation of the building is based on creating a central body that takes the form of a triumphal arch or Renaissance façade, crowned with a pediment, and a dome with a hexagonal drum that acts as a lantern that illuminates the interior from above. Two loggias or porticoed galleries start from the main body on each side, with semicircular arches supported by Tuscan columns, which are crowned by small temples with hexagonal domes. These porticoed galleries conceal the two wings in which the building completes its space. The work that Pelai Martínez carried out in La Bisbal d'Empordà as municipal architect and the relationship with the firm Terracotta Fuster in the production of terracotta is evident in every detail of the building, as it is with these materials that all the ornamental elements are made, which give the whole a strong chromatic contrast with the smooth, whitish stucco of the walls. The echoes of Florence are evident and, in this sense, the admiration that both architects felt for Brunelleschi is very noticeable. It was built between 1927 and 1929 to become the Palace of Graphic Arts for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition, under the design of the architect Pelai Martínez i Paricio, with the collaboration of Raimon Duran i Reynals. The latter made a long trip to the Italian city in 1920, accompanied by Nicolau M. Rubió Tudurí, a great admirer of Brunelleschi.

    1927 - 1929

  • Palace of Agriculture

    Manuel Maria Mayol i Ferrer, Josep Maria Ribas i Casas

    Palace of Agriculture

    Located in the Sants-Montjuïc district, the Agricultural Pavilion is located within the grounds of the 1929 International Exhibition, right on the border of the França Xica district and Montjuïc Park. Formed by several bodies, this group of buildings occupies the corner between Passeig de Santa Madrona and Carrer de Lleida, articulating its volumes around a central courtyard today known as Plaça de Margarida Xirgu. Currently, only half of the original buildings are preserved. It was one of the biggest pavilions of the exhibition, with a surface that exceeded 16,000 m2. The entire complex was distributed around a large central garden courtyard with several porticoed naves and galleries. The whole complex follows the canons of noucentista architecture, adopting, however, an Italian Renaissance language. While the walls of the façades are coated with white and yellow mortar, the supporting elements, the framing of the openings and the decorative elements were made of terra cotta. The body facing the Passeig de Santa Madrona stands out for the porticoed gallery that surrounds the old main entrance to the site, which frames a monumental terra cotta portal with Ionic pilasters decorated with quarterings. Above the moulded arch of the door there is a terra cotta relief with two allegories of field work and the inscription "AGRICVLTVRA". However, the most important thing about this construction are the multiple octagonal towers that protrude above the roof, covered with tiled domes decorated with ceramic pinnacles, and the large dome with a central drum. The façades of this building include a veritable catalogue of Renaissance windows, based on arch galleries, entablature, pediments, shells and chandelier decoration. At the corner between Carrer de Lleida and Passeig de Santa stands out a plaque supported by two angels made in bronze by Frederic Marès in memory of the architect Manuel Maria Mayol stands out. The façade facing Plaça de Margarida Xirgu presents a large entrance box with lowered arches supported on robust columns with Ionic capitals. This box maintains a very clear formal correspondence with the courtyard of Casal Solleric in Mallorca city, this being a likely source of inspiration. On this façade there is a bas-relief of a classical theme representing an athlete, the work of Frederic Marès. The interiors of this body were greatly transformed due to abandonment and new uses, although the main hall remains - a space with a Greek cross plan crowned by a large dome decorated with paintings referring to life in the countryside, work by Darius Vilàs. The body facing Carrer de Lleida, today occupied by the Teatre Municipal Mercat de les Flors, presents an access body crowned with domes attached to a large nave with a rectangular plan. The access body, which forms a corner, presents two access boxes formed by three terracotta arches on Tuscan stone columns and two window galleries with Tuscan columns and a terracotta eaves. In the corner, a large shield of Barcelona in terra cotta supported by four angels of the same material was embedded. The angles of this body are finished with towers crowned with domes and ceramic pinnacles. In the middle rises a dome of greater dimensions. The interior of this body houses a large circular hall with large Corinthian columns on the first level and galleries of Ionic columns on the second, bearing the weight of a dome decorated with paintings by the Mallorcan artist Miquel Barceló. On one of the walls that link to the new building of the Institut del Teatre, there is a ceramic mural by Frederic Amat. The Agricultural Pavilion was built between 1927 and 1929 under the technical direction of the architects Josep Maria Ribas i Casas and Manuel Maria Mayol i Ferrer. They conceived it as a monumental complex of buildings in several bodies around a central square in order to host the agricultural section of the International Exhibition of 1929. During the post-war period the pavilions that surrounded the central square on its northern and eastern sides they were completely demolished and replaced by new homes, leaving less than half of the buildings that made up the complex standing. These went on to house municipal warehouses and workshops and, between 1964 and 1984, the Mercat Central de la Flor, until it was moved to the Mercabarna area of the Zona Franca. In 1983, the city council's culture councillor, Maria Aurèlia Capmany, promoted the creation, in the nave perpendicular to Carrer de Lleida, of Mercat de les Flors, a municipal centre for dance and movement arts. The building, reopened in 1985, was remodeled to accommodate its new uses and its main dome (12 metres in diameter) was redecorated by Majorcan artist Miquel Barceló. From 1999, the sector facing the Passeig de Santa Madrona was also rehabilitated to host the headquarters of Teatre Lliure, an institution founded in Gràcia in 1976 and which would grow with the inauguration of the new headquarters in November 2001. On the occasion of that inauguration, the old central courtyard was redeveloped with a new square which was dedicated to Margarida Xirgu. Parallel to these refurbishments, on the northern flank of the square, which had also been demolished, the new headquarters of the Institut del Teatre, an underground car park and Plaça Ovidi Montllor were built there. All in all, the complex is currently known as the City of Theatre, as it houses the Mercat de les Flors Municipal Theatre, the Teatre Lliure Foundation, and the Theatre Institute.
  • German Pavilion of the 1929 International Exhibition

    Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

    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.

    1928 - 1929

  • 1929

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