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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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:
2019-2024 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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Cafè-Restaurant de l'Exposició Internacional de 1888.
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- Author:
- Lluís Domènech i Montaner
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- Date:
- 1888
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- Type:
- Drawing
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- Fonds / Held by:
- Arxiu Històric del COAC
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Cafè-Restaurant de l'Exposició Internacional de 1888.
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- Author:
- Lluís Domènech i Montaner
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- Date:
- 1888
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- Type:
- Drawing
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- Dimensions:
- 32 x 45,7cm
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- Technique:
- Gravat
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- Support:
- Paper
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- Fonds / Held by:
- Arxiu Històric del COAC
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Cafè-Restaurant de l'Exposició Internacional de 1888
-
- Author:
- Lluís Domènech i Montaner
-
- Type:
- Drawing
-
- Fonds / Held by:
- Arxiu Històric del COAC
-
close
Memory
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.
For the 1888 Barcelona Universal Exhibition, Domènech was commissioned to build a large Café-Restaurant in the Parc de la Ciutadella.
The building was to be permanent, unlike the rest of the pavilions at the Exhibition, which were temporary.
The Executive Commission that managed the Exhibition liked it very much, because it had original construction solutions and decorative finishes (reinterpreting peninsular artistic styles), like a good modern construction.
Because of the medieval air the building had, it was named ‘El Castell dels Tres Dragons’, a well-known comedy written by Serafí Pitarra (Frederic Soler) a few years earlier.
The project was completed in a very short time, and work began immediately afterwards, but several problems during its construction left it unfinished, especially in the ornamental finishes.
Domènech ended up renouncing the commission rather than hand the work over to the tenant and see how he acted as he pleased. Josep Forteza, who until then had been the assistant architect, was commissioned to continue the work.
The building has a rectangular, four-sided shape, flanked by square towers at the corners. Two of these towers rotate towards a polygonal shape and the tower of homage is crowned with a wrought-iron and glass crown. There is an extension on the ground floor with two large segmental arches and a terrace at the top. The interior is a single nave, divided into ground floor and first floor. The exterior appearance, with walls made of exposed brick and topped with battlements, is reminiscent of a medieval castle. But the ingenious interior structure recovers the Mudéjar building tradition of double walls, like the towers of Teruel, combined with Gothic buttresses.
The façades are built with two very slender sheets of brick, separated by a one-metre wide walkable space, which, thanks to the numerous connecting sheets and the metal braces, create a very stable whole with very little material.
This system makes construction cheaper and quicker, but this constructive daring generated doubts within the construction monitoring committee about its solidity, and they even asked for structural verification calculations of the solution.
Inside, the majestic 18-metre-high first-floor hall is covered with diaphragm arches, a traditional feature of Catalan Gothic architecture, but in this case they are made of metal latticework and are exposed, as Viollet-le-Duc proposed.
Although Domènech's project drawings showed the building to be profusely decorated, in the end only a few stained-glass windows, a frieze of ceramic coats of arms under the cornice and yellow glazed ceramics on the battlements were made.
The walls and ceilings were later decorated with paintings.
Once the Universal Exhibition was over, it lost its use as a banqueting hall and restaurant and the building was abandoned.
Later it became an exhibition hall, music school, Museum of Catalonia, Museum of Biology, school bus centre, Municipal Labour Exchange, Social Assistance and finally, from 1940 to 2000, Museum of Zoology (and later of Natural Sciences). It is not currently open to the public.
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Café-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. -
Museu d’Història Natural
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Archive
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Drawing
Cafè-Restaurant de l'Exposició Internacional de 1888.
Arxiu Històric del COAC
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Drawing
Cafè-Restaurant de l'Exposició Internacional de 1888.
Arxiu Històric del COAC
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Drawing
Cafè-Restaurant de l'Exposició Internacional de 1888
Arxiu Històric del COAC
Routes (1)
Related Works (27)
Set La Ciutadella | Exposició Internacional de 1888
