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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.
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.
House located in a corner composed of a ground floor and first floor. Crowning of undulating shapes, façade openings under moulded recessed arches. Undulating balconies on the first floor. Central tripartite balcony with prismatic columns and floral capitals. Inside the house, stone arches are preserved that correspond to the farmhouse before the last reform.
The house is very old, from 1300. The last renovation was around 1900.
Urban housing, partially isolated, in a modernist style but with medieval roots.
It is a property with a wide historical evolution, as it seems to have precedents at least around the year 1300 (IPAC). This trajectory is partly visible through the union of several volumes of buildings, which together form the current housing, the last important remodelling of which was carried out around the year 1900.
The building is located just to the east of the church of Santa Magdalena, from which it is separated from the eastern corner of the apse by a few metres. The courtyard of the estate reaches up to the front of the church's façade, in the Major Square, and currently also includes the land on the side of the church, which had formerly been a cemetery. It is a large property, approximately 345m2 in floor area, formed by the union of at least three different buildings, made perceptible in the polygonal layout, although quite regular, of its perimeter. It faces southeast, where it has the main façade, with Baix Street, northeast with Anselm Clavé Avenue, northwest with the church, and southwest with Major Square and the alley that connects the square with Baix Street.
The property has a ground floor and a main floor, with an undercover floor at least in the central part, under the ridge. The front of the main façade is particularly noteworthy, in a modernist style although mixed with a strong popular character, maintaining the essence of a town house. It presents an arrangement based on four axes of openings; the first three from the north maintain a symmetrical arrangement and separation, also with respect to the central axis of the building, while the southernmost breaks this proportion, being less separated both from the angle of the façade and from the adjacent openings.
On the ground floor, the main access to the property is located right on the central axis of the building. It is a high portal with a gable arch, made with moulded voussoirs and padlock-like ashlars on the jambs. The rest of the openings on the ground floor are three large windows that follow the style and width of the entrance, also with a gabled arch, in which the lower frame of the openings, which constitutes the plinth of the building, highlights the openings through a semicircular arch. Above this there is a decorated iron rail protecting the lower part of the window. The southernmost window does not share these characteristics.
On the ground floor, the property has three windows, following the axes of the lower floor. The southernmost one diverges again from the rest, being a window similar to those on the ground floor. The remaining three correspond to balconies, all made of corrugated, moulded flagstone, protected by an iron railing, also winding, decorated with plant motifs. The central window is particularly noteworthy, which is tripartite, presenting on the sides two windows narrower than the central opening, separated by jambs in the form of a column, moulded, with a capital ornamented with flowers, which support the basket-handle arches.
Finally, the crowning of the façade is also significant, which is composed of a wavy pediment, with sinuous projections that highlight the central part of the building, and which is topped off by a prominent antefix placed right in the centre.
On the other hand, the southwest façade presents a gallery of windows on the ground floor and a terraced gallery on the ground floor, all of apparently recent construction, while the northeast façade is characterised by representing the union of buildings that make up the property, clearly visible through several windows of diverse composition, all modest, in a popular style, not comparable to those on the main façade, two of which are balconies.
The roof of the property is gabled, although with various slopes and projections depending on the body they are covering.
According to the Inventory of the Architectural Heritage of Catalonia, the building has historical precedents that go back to the year 1300. The same is also indicated (14th century) in the book ‘El Pla del Penedès. Entre un mar de vinyes’ (SEVERAL AUTHORS, 2011: 90).
The year 1900 appears in the cadastral file as the construction date, which should be understood as an approximate date corresponding to the remodelling in which the current façade was made.