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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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
Thomas House is a work of the modernist architect Lluís Doménech i Montaner built between 1895 and 1898. It was originally a three-storey building. In the first two floors, an engraving workshop had been installed, and on the upper floor, the house of its owner. The façade of the plants dedicated to the workshop has the form of a large, lowered arch with a continuous stained-glass window protected by a grid of floral stylisations. The original façade of the house had an Ionic colonnade. On the roof there were two very imaginative bodies, one glazed and crowned with an iron crest and the other with a pinnacle supporting a large wrought iron sign.
In 1895, the publisher Josep Thomas, a specialist in the most modern graphic reproduction techniques who worked regularly with Montaner i Simón, commissioned Domènech i Montaner to build his house-workshop.
The initial project envisaged a semi-basement for storage, a mezzanine for offices and workshops and a floor for living space. It occupied a plot between partitions which were 20 metres wide and 21.5 metres deep. A large central courtyard, surrounded by a gallery, let natural light into the living spaces and reached down to the basement to illuminate all the floors.
On the façade, the lower stone level, consisting of the basement and the mezzanine, is distinguished by a large window opening with a very low arch, protected by polychrome stained-glass windows and a wrought-iron grille, which lets a great deal of light into the basement. On either side of the façade there are the entrances to the building, the one on the left corresponding to the workshop and the one on the right to the family dwelling.
The façade was covered with ceramics from the Pujol and Bausis house, with metallic lustre elements. The ornamental stone elements were by Alfons Juyol.
Both the façade and the interior were extensively decorated. The carpentry work by the Viladevall brothers, the stained glass by Antoni Rigalt, the mosaics by Lluís Bru, the wrought iron work by Cerrajería Flinch.
Later, in 1902, one of Domènech's daughters married the publisher's son.
In 1912, Francesc Guàrdia Vidal, another son-in-law of Domènech i Montaner, designed an extension to the building and built three more floors. This extension maintained the harmony of the ensemble and moved the cresting to the upper part of the building.
The former workshop on the ground floor and semi-basement was renovated by the studio PARA 1979 as a shop BD Ediciones de Diseño. It is still in commercial use today, with the Cubiñá furniture shop. The rest of the building is housing.
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Thomas House
Thomas House is a work of the modernist architect Lluís Doménech i Montaner built between 1895 and 1898. It was originally a three-storey building. In the first two floors, an engraving workshop had been installed, and on the upper floor, the house of its owner. The façade of the plants dedicated to the workshop has the form of a large, lowered arch with a continuous stained-glass window protected by a grid of floral stylisations. The original façade of the house had an Ionic colonnade. On the roof there were two very imaginative bodies, one glazed and crowned with an iron crest and the other with a pinnacle supporting a large wrought iron sign. -
Remodelling and Upward Extension of Thomas House
In 1912 the Casa Thomas was extended to its actual size by Domènech's son-in-law, Francesc Guàrdia i Vial, who moved the two bodies of the crown to the new roof, built two grandstands on the old floor and designed a façade that links in a textual way with the primitive work. The two lower floors of the building are still preserved as designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. -
FAD Award
Award-Winner / Winner. Category: RestorationBD Ediciones de Diseño Store in Thomas HouseStudio PER, Pep Bonet Bertran, Cristian Cirici i Alomar, Lluís Clotet i Ballús, Oscar Tusquets Blanca
BD Ediciones de Diseño Store in Thomas House
Studio PER, Pep Bonet Bertran, Cristian Cirici i Alomar, Lluís Clotet i Ballús, Oscar Tusquets Blanca
Thomas House’s basements were completely abandoned in early spring 1979. The façade was full of election posters and the windows were broken and full of dust. Inside, benches of machines had already been sold at the railroad; fallen railings and skylights had been completely broken or replaced by a slab of ceramic material; and there were half-demolished partitions to facilitate the filming of “The Savolta Case”. The industrial decline of Catalonia has also had its positive aspects. If the partitions, cabinets and stained glass windows in coloured leaded glass and the ceilings designed by Lluís Doménech i Montaner are still preserved, it is because the heirs of Joseph Thomas did not have enough money to replace them with “modular partitions of aluminum” and an “Armstrong” roof. In the restoration and installation works of the B.D. headquarters, on the ground floor of Thomas House, we have not mimetically repeated any broken or worn elements, we have basically cleaned it up, in the most prosaic sense of the term. We used some of the existing closet doors to close the holes in some new partitions we built to separate the warehouse from the exhibit. We changed the beginning of the staircase that connects the two floors. We have replaced an old translucent glass skylight with a new clear glass one that shows the sgraffito and stained glass in the inner courtyard. We changed the floor, which we think replaced an old skylight with a skylight like the original. We laid a carpet with our anagram as the pavement of all the areas destroyed by the benches of the machines. And to insulate ourselves from street noise and protect the stained, glass windows on the façade, we have installed a luna security that protects the outside, such as a display case, grilles and stained, glass windows. It was the detail that we cared about the most and the element that compared it to its cost that solved most problems for us. It is also the intervention that best expresses our attitude towards monuments.