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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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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Memory
• Site
The plot is in the Mira-sol district of the municipality of Sant Cugat del Vallès, dominated by detached houses with gardens.
• Programme
A space of spaces or a house of houses in the middle of a garden. The geometry of the house consists of four volumes. Each small piece revolves around an interior patio and at the same time looks in different ways towards the four sides of the plot generating different garden microclimates around it.
The volumes that make up the house are visually related through the patio. The dialogue with the outside garden takes place in a restrained manner with punctual and limited openings.
Three of these four volumes are on the ground floor. The fourth, on two floors, has a large sliding window facing south and towards the views of the valley. It is accessed through the double-height volume, which houses a reading and music space and a study on the first floor. The second contains the kitchen, dining room and living room. The third and fourth volumes house the bedrooms. All of them are connected by means of transitional spaces in the form of walkways. The Garden concept responds to two principles. There are small terraces at the foot of each opening, which follow the language of the house; the fence is understood as a natural element that supports small living areas surrounded by vegetation. Each corner of the house has a large tree that relates to each of the four volumes.
• Pre-manufacturing concept
It is based on the concept of pre-design. This means that the project is being worked on together, already in the initial stages, with the industrialists. These simultaneously develop a system of constructive solutions based on pre-industrialisation, pre-assembly and the use of easily recyclable materials. The closing systems are not constructively dependent on each other. For example, the low-emissivity glasses are placed indiscriminately in the solid wood openings, so that the flexibility of the installation is improved. The openings of the rooms have two interior porticoes. One permeable to the air that gives security and light comfort and the other opaque wooden one that darkens the room.
• Sustainability and low consumption
We have identified different gradients of climate comfort and solar protection in the interior spaces according to activity and orientation and have facilitated good energy control in the house, reducing demand and consumption. We have optimised its efficiency thanks to low consumption lighting and the use of efficient household appliances. The design of a garden according to a water-saving principle in which only plants that require a low amount of irrigation are applied. Solar panels on the roof that capture solar energy and provide heating and hot water sustainably. The crowning of the building rises to hide the facilities and integrate them into the project. We have identified different gradients of climatic comfort and solar protection in the interior spaces according to the activity and orientation to reduce demand and consumption and optimise the efficiency of the house thanks
to an automatic heating regulation system, good orientation, cross ventilation with the different gradients of the garden, the patio and the exteriors... It starts from unity and constructive repetition. The same detail resolved throughout the building. The same construction system is used for the façade and roof. The whole of the façade is repeated from the unit of detail and from each module the same solution is repeated in the four modules that make up the four programmatic parts that are connected and relate to each garden at will.
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