Josep Lluís Sert - Arquitectura Catalana .Cat

Memory

Arquitecte, urbanista, professor i teòric de l’arquitectura. Titulat el 1928. Fou un dels membres fundadors del GATCPAC. A causa de la Guerra Civil es traslladà als EUA, on desenvolupà gran part de la seva obra.

Source: Arxiu Històric del COAC

Works (21)

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Chronology (23)

Poble d'estiueig a la Costa Brava

Josep Lluís Sert
Casa Sert

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert
López House

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert

It constitutes a personal interpretation of the housing concept inherited by Le Corbusier. The houses are organised on two levels, with independent accesses. On both floors, a small central distributor gives access to all rooms. Downstairs there is the living room, dining room, kitchen, a bedroom and the restroom areas. The rest of the bedrooms are upstairs, plus a gallery that surrounds the living room and leads to the small balcony in the corner. The organisation in duplex housing is reflected in the façade, which alters the conventional scale and proposes a more dignified image of urban housing.
GaloBart House

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert
Estudi Josep Lluís Sert

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert
Grup d'Habitatges Experimentals del Comissariat de la Casa Obrera

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert, Joan Baptista Subirana i Subirana, Josep Torres Clavé
Biblioteca Infantil Desmuntable

Josep Lluís Sert, Joan Baptista Subirana i Subirana, Josep Torres Clavé
Roca Jeweller's

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert

During the 1930s, Barcelona was carrying out a process of internationalisation of Catalan culture and Passeig de Gràcia was becoming the most elegant and prestigious promenade of the moment. Rogeli Roca, who was a jeweler very interested in contemporary design and avant-garde movements, decided to move the family jewelry store that was located on Les Rambles, in front of the Liceu Theatre, and take it to the corner of Passeig de Gràcia with Gran Via. He was a friend of Sert's and entrusted him with the project. This is a good example of how to intervene courageously in an existing building, although current regulations would not allow such an action to be proposed due to the protection of the Eixample. Sert's proposal is radical and consistent with the possibilities offered by the metallic structure of the building, which remained hidden under the neoclassical façades of the Eixample. The new façade is completely freed from the restrictions of the load-bearing walls and is conceived as a light enclosure. A translucent skin, executed with polished and reflective materials, which radically contrasts with the matt texture and opacity of the render. This façade caused much controversy in the society of the moment.
Pla Macià

GATCPAC, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier), Josep Lluís Sert, Josep Torres Clavé
Josep Maria Folch i Torres School

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert, Josep Torres Clavé

The Republican Generalitat was very sensitive to the GATCPAC proposal to define new standards that would facilitate the massive implementation of schools throughout Catalonia and some prototypes that responded to this objective began to be promoted. This is the case of the Folch i Torres School Group, which had been proposed as a prototype for early childhood education schools: it was conceived from a functional and repeatable module that allowed the schools to be sized and expanded depending on the number of students. This group was made up of two modules (two schools) that, anticipating a possible expansion, were built at one end of the site, leaving the sides free for the future connection. In the 1950s, an extension was made to the west façade, without respecting the original system of identical modules. The GATCPAC promoted a series of architectural concepts that had to be taken into account when building a school: space and furniture proportionate to the dimensions of the child, good orientation and easy connection of the classrooms with the outside, good ventilation and maximum lighting. The schools of Palau were built with these premises.
Weekend Houses

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert, Josep Torres Clavé
Projecte per a la Urbanització de la Part Baixa de Montjuïc

GATCPAC, Cristòfor Alzamora i Abreu, Francesc Fàbregas i Vehil, Josep González Esplugas, Francesc Perales Mascaró, Ricard Ribas Seva, Josep Lluís Sert, Josep Torres Clavé
Bloc House

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert, Joan Baptista Subirana i Subirana, Josep Torres Clavé

It is a recreation of the proposal for à redent housing, formulated by Le Corbusier in 1922 for an urban fabric with a density of 300 inhabitants per hectare and luxurious housing. The GATCPAC project, aimed at social housing, also places the complex in a north-south direction, so that housing is always oriented to the south and east. Each home is accessed via a long, covered corridor that is always on the north and west side. The blocks, long and narrow, are solved with a metal structure of two passages. The ground floor has a covered terrace in front of the living room. Upstairs, each pair of bays has three bedrooms, so the central bedroom is compensated. The resulting density is 1,140 inhabitants per hectare, much lower than that of traditional urban fabrics on closed house squares.
Unió de Cooperadors de Gavá

Josep Lluís Sert, Josep Torres Clavé
Els Convents School Group

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert

In 1935, Sert designed two school buildings for Martorell Town Council: the Montserrat school group, in the Can Carreres district, and the Els Convents school group, in the orchard of the former Capuchin Convent. The Els Convents group has an L-shaped floor plan with the playground facing south, against the mountain. It is made up of three modules (three schools) linked by an L-shaped corridor that runs from one side of the building to the other, depending on the orientation. The volume has two floors and is supported by a large stone wall which serves as a retaining wall. Sert defended reinforced concrete as the basic construction material to meet the demands imposed by functionality, rejecting the gratuitous application of ornamental elements. At the end of the 1960s, the construction of the A-7 motorway damaged an important part of the open spaces of the Els Convents group and some subsequent modifications were made to the south side of the building. The caretaker's house, a work by Sert, was also demolished. They are one of the few remaining examples of Sert's school buildings, which gives them special importance and makes their recovery essential.
Can Xifré Segell Preventive Pro-Child School

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert

This school was built as an annex to the old Can Xifré hospital for children with tuberculosis, but it never functioned due to the Spanish Civil War. It is currently the headquarters of the Salvador Espriu Documentation and Studies Centre. The building is made up of two educational modules, separated by an access bay, with a distributor and services. Five corridors in total - each one is covered by a Catalan vault that no longer rests on load-bearing walls, but on girders, which increases the width of the space. It is a white building, with abstract and forceful volumetry, typical of the CIAM, which rests on a stone plinth. The classrooms open onto a terrace facing south, which is used for outdoor classes and is protected by a concrete slab that follows the aesthetics of machinery, like the wing of an airplane. The commission was carried out by the Segell Proinfància, an organisation created during the Second Republic, in 1933, which had the mission of raising money for the construction and maintenance of buildings dedicated to the prevention of tuberculosis. The money raised came from the sale of stamps during Christmas.
Pavilion of the Republic for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition

GATCPAC, Luis Lacasa Navarro, Josep Lluís Sert
Tuberculosis Clinic

GATCPAC, Josep Lluís Sert, Joan Baptista Subirana i Subirana, Josep Torres Clavé

The building, intended to cover a sanitary need that was very common at the time, does not meet the street alignments but is organised into two parallel bodies oriented from east to west and articulated in an L shape. You enter the enclosure through a semi-public garden that gives direct access to both bodies. The block on the north side contains the surgeries, laboratories and archives. The body at the bottom of the site houses the conference room and the library on the upper floors. The layout of all the rooms, the circulation system and the treatment of the façades respond to a rigorous monitoring of the program and the solar abacus, regardless of the constraints of the location. It is a model of inserting the concepts of rationalism into a fabric that is not taken into account, and which is implicitly criticised for the strict functionality of the building itself.
Les Escales Park

Josep Anglada Rosselló, Daniel Gelabert i Fontova, José Ribas i González, Josep Lluís Sert

The project was carried out in two phases, as it was necessary to dispense with some initially designed blocks and compensate for the available buildability on a smaller plot of land. The set consists of the aggregation of a repeated unit containing two duplex dwellings. Each unit has two blind walls on either side that allow aggregation with the neighbouring unit. The living room is on the sunny façades, arranged in an L and with a large, covered terrace in front. The kitchens, dining rooms and service galleries are on the north façades. The bedroom floor is accessed via a staircase in the side wall, accompanied in some cases by a gap above the living room. The combination of symmetry with seriality or the system of unit aggregation reflects an interpretation of the concepts of rationalism that is typical of the 1960s.
FAD Award

Shortlisted. Category: Architecture

Joan Miró Foundation
FAD Award

Award-Winner / Winner. Category: Architecture

Les Escales Park
Joan Miró Foundation

Josep Anglada Rosselló, Daniel Gelabert i Fontova, José Ribas i González, Josep Lluís Sert

It is the most significant exponent of Sert’s work in Barcelona during his American phase. The museum space is conceived as a circular route around a courtyard that links several spaces of not very large dimensions, and with a clear discrimination of their functions. The route folds over itself in search of the longest dimension and invites the visitor to the slowness or stillness in the contemplation of the works. The specific lighting of each area combines the zenithal light, distributed and nuanced, and the light coming from the glazed enclosures, which offer a certain visual contact with the surrounding garden. In addition to the central courtyard, two more courtyards, to the north and to the east, relate the Foundation’s space to the panoramic view of the city. The roof is also understood as an exhibition space. The entire wall system is made up of concrete screens that leave the joints between the load-bearing reinforcements and the enclosures -which are prefabricated- visible. It is a conception of the museum space that puts all the attention in the relationship between a certain type of work and the architectural environment, a synthesis between art and architecture that was one of the most pursued milestones by a whole generation of modern architects.
Àrea de Servei La Jonquera

Josep Lluís Sert