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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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:
2019-2024 Aureli Mora i Omar OrnaqueDocumental 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 OrnaqueCollaborators:
2019-2024 Lluis Andreu Sergi Ballester Maria Jesús Quintero Lucía M. Villodres Montse ViuExternal Collaborators:
2019-2024 Helena Cepeda Inès MartinelWith the support of:
Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de CulturaCollaborating Entities:
ArquinFADFundació 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.
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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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Works (5)
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Chronology (6)
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Extension of Juan Manuel Zafra Secondary School
BCQ Arquitectes, David Baena i Asencio, Antoni Casamor i Maldonado
The Juan Manuel Zafra Secondary School is located at 51 Rogent Street, in the Dreta de l’Eixample district of Barcelona. The first and main building was built at the beginning of the last century with a clear post-industrial Modernist aesthetic. At the end of the 1980s, the vocational training school was considered its expansion as a result of the insufficiency of teaching spaces and the difficulty of adapting the school to the new school programs. In this situation, it is proposed to build a new building that would house the entire theoretical teaching program, leaving the practical classrooms, workshops and administration of the centre in the old building. The new building will also house the sports support program at the school, consisting of a multi-purpose gymnasium and changing rooms. The school's floor availability was very limited and was reduced to the playground. This is located in the void left by the buildings at number 598 of Provença Street. This space of very tight dimensions was also flanked by the large partitions of the adjoining residential buildings. One of the most important decisions was to maintain the character of the inner courtyard of the block open to Provença Street and thus visually free the old school. Therefore, the new classroom could only be located on one of the short sides of the courtyard and sandwiched between two partitions of the two neighbouring buildings. The regulatory length of the playing court immovably fixed the position of the façade. This fact meant an exercise in continence and compaction of the program in height. With this situation, the idea of considering the volume defined by the twelve classrooms as a box suspended in space and presiding over the playground as the main piece arose. The rest of the program, services, tutorials, stairs and others are literally attached to the existing partitions, solving the lack of orthogonality of them. The circulations that occur between the service strip and the classrooms emphasise this autonomy of the main volume even more. The rest of the program is located below the level of access from Provença Street. The gym, as a large empty space, is located on the double-height basement floor with a direct view from the access porch. Keeping the level of the sports court at the same level as the ground floor of the old school allows for the optimisation of the school's internal circulation and a lower fence on a more humane scale. We believe that the programmatic rigour and rationality at the same time as considering its construction have favoured the final clarity of the intervention. -
Building for Workshops and Greenhouse of the UdG
BCQ Arquitectes, David Baena i Asencio, Antoni Casamor i Maldonado, Josep Maria Quera i Arregui
Es tracta d’una edificació annexa a l’Escola Politècnica, destinada a acollir dos usos ben diferenciats: els tallers, que ocupen la planta baixa, i l’hivernacle, un petit cos que sobresurt a la coberta. Les solucions constructives i l’elecció dels materials tendeixen a cercar una uniformitat que s’adapti a la flexibilitat dels usos, que n’afavoreixi el manteniment i que indueixi l’estalvi energètic. Així, tots els tancaments s’unifiquen amb un vidre translúcid d’una gran capacitat aïllant, com també les lluernes de la coberta, disposades per permetre l’entrada de llum zenital a les zones de treball. -
Vila de Madrid Square
BCQ Arquitectes, David Baena i Asencio, Antoni Casamor i Maldonado
We must bear in mind that the Vila de Madrid Square is a very special space within the system of squares and free spaces in the old town. That is why we proposed the revitalisation of the square as an urban space for pedestrians, maintaining its specificity as a "different" place within the streets and squares that surround it, and to celebrate the archaeological site that the square hosts: a Roman necropolis, one of the most important vestiges of Catalonia in the Roman era. The square is presented as an urban public garden, partly because it is the way to respond to its uniqueness as an archaeological site, partly because it continues the same concept of intervention, and finally because we always imagine it as a different place in urban spaces of commercial activity (sometimes frantic) surrounding it. A central grassy square is proposed at the level of Canuda Street and the eastern front of the square. The central area of the square is covered with grass and most of the existing trees are maintained. The surface of the lawn is depressed with a slight slope to the level of the Roman necropolis. Approximately in front of the façade of the Palau Sabassona building, the headquarters of the Ateneu Barcelonès, there is a paved strip with a portico-viewpoint towards the area of the tombs. A pedestrian walkway "flies over" the archeological remains until the extension of the Duc de la Victòria passage (connected to the Rambla through the commercial passage). This walkway has, at the bottom, a system of doors that protect the access to the archeological area. In the perimeter area of the square, the usual building materials and street furniture in the historic centre of Barcelona are used. In the central area, however, turf, basalt stone and weathering steel are introduced. With the latter, walls that allow the permanence of pre-existing trees are built. -
Social Security Treasury Office Building
BCQ Arquitectes, David Baena i Asencio, Antoni Casamor i Maldonado
Arrangement of the ensemble. The building negotiates its orientation with the urban plot, adapting to the reality of the existing urban environment. The ground and basement floors are located within the boundaries of the lot; the upper floors, on the other hand, are moved and aligned with De l'Om Street. This displacement frees up the space of the square located to the south and generates a wider space. Although the building divides the void of the urban plot in two, the treatment of the spaces is the same, and the ground floor is understood as an element of continuity of the outdoor space. The transparency that occurs in the access with a view of the square is essential. The building. The characteristic use of the building is administrative on the floors above ground, while the basement floors are used for parking and service spaces. It is a building organised in three volumes, the rotation of which is suggested by the geometry of the building plot. The volume of the ground floor adopts the geometry of the plot. This floor establishes a relationship of continuity with the public space in which it is located. The volume of the first to fourth floors recovers the direction of De l’Om Street, and creates, with the overhang originated by this turn, a large porch that frames and protects the entrance to the building. The third volume of the fifth and sixth floors is oriented according to an intermediate turn between the two previous volumes. The fact that this third volume is smaller than the lower one generates a terrace, accessible to the users of the building from the fifth floor. The need for natural light determined by the administrative use of the building is solved with large windows on the façade that are protected from the incidence of direct solar radiation through a continuous envelope of aluminum slats. These slats give identity to the building’s façades: they are arranged in a horizontal position along the main façades of the building (longitudinal façades) and in a vertical position on the ends. The use of a porticoed structure with pillars on the façade allows for diaphanous plants that are organised from two vertical cores, leaving the rest of the surface free. Compartmentalisation is done through light partition elements. In this way, the building allows a versatility of occupation over time. -
EU Mies Award
NominatedSant Gervasi - Joan Maragall Library
