Parish Church of Sant Jeroni de Montbau

How to get there

In Pictures

View all images

Address: Pl. Mossèn Ferran Palau, 3; Barcelona
Other Appellations: Church and parish of the Montbau estate
Category: Architectural Complex
Typology: Religious Spaces / Places of Worship

Memory

The construction of the church of Montbau does not escape the influence of the European architecture of the time. Not only because the first idea was to propose the architect Le Corbusier for the design - his advanced age was a definitive factor in refusing the commission -, but also because of the construction system chosen by the winning team, formed by the architects Vayreda and Montguió in 1963. The different volumes that make up the program are linked by an outer canopy that unifies the whole and gives a human scale to the accesses, to discover, once inside, a much more important volume. The structure of this interior is solved with a plot of metal pillars with a roof with lowered vaults of reinforced concrete. A technological innovation of the traditional Catalan vault and which had also been the object of study and of subsequent use in some works by Le Corbusier himself, such as the Maisons Jaoul.

Author: Janice Moret

The Church of Sant Jeroni belongs to the Montbau neighbourhood, a project from 1957 that is part of a new stage of urban action carried out by the Municipal Housing Board, in which a proposal is made in order to create complete urban centres perfectly differentiated from the rest of the urban fabric. One of the differentiating elements with respect to previous public actions consists in the provision of social facilities, one of which would be the church of Sant Jeroni.

In 1963, after Le Corbusier rejected the commission due to his advanced age, a competition was held to build this church, which was won by the architects Vayreda and Montguió. The project consists of two separate volumes: the parish and the church. The highlight of the project is the zigzag-shaped exterior canopy that links both buildings, delimiting the green areas and ending up delimiting an exterior cloister of great architectural beauty. Constructively, it is conceived as a reinforced concrete slab supported by a series of steel uprights painted black, with a very light and slender image. The two buildings are resolved with Corbusian abstract forms.

Author: Xavier Llobet i Ribeiro

Source: DOCOMOMO Ibérico

Authors

How to get there

On the Map

Awarded

Cataloged

Disappeared

All works

Constellation

Chronology

Montbau Industrial Estate

Giráldez - López Iñigo - Subías Arquitectes, Guillermo Giráldez Dávila, Pedro López Iñigo, Xavier Subías i Fages

The Montbau district, located below the Tibidabo, next to Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, has a total area of approximately 31 Ha. The part built today, or in a very advanced stage of construction, consists of two basic residential units. The garden and the neighbourhood park are also practically finished. A group of about 70 single-family homes in the upper part of the slope is currently under construction, a group that we will not include in the present analysis because it is in a very little advanced phase and, therefore, without specific data. The architect of this group is Joan Bosch. Who are the authors of Montbau? Here is a first concrete problem that can lead us to general considerations. Due to programming requirements, the Municipal Housing Board decided to commission the architects Guillermo Giráldez, Pedro López and Xavier Subías with the urgency of a very few weeks as a matter of urgency. By what criteria were these architects chosen? Probably for simple reasons of proximity, administrative relationship, circumstantial insufficiency of the technical staff itself, etc. But was there a concern to choose a good team precisely for one of the largest projects that were then being developed? At least, or was there an awareness that, by chance and for reasons of bureaucratic convenience, he had fallen into the hands of a good team, then with a promising youthful push? * The original Partial Plan was altered, both in its first phase, slightly, and in the second one, with a change of drafting team and urban planning that substantially modified it.
Montbau Estate: Second Unit

Manuel Baldrich Tibau, Antoni Bonet Castellana, Pedro López Iñigo, Josep Maria Soteras i Mauri

When the decision to build the second sector was made in 1961, the Board of Trustees commissioned the architects Manuel Baldrich, Antoni Bonet, Pedro López Iñigo and Josep Soteras to drat the corresponding architectural project. What were the reasons for choosing this heterogeneous team, made up of two municipal architects, a provincial architect and an independent architect, who had just arrived from Argentina with an obvious professional prestige? This team, despite the presence of municipal architects, one of them co-author of the first Plan, decided that it could not be limited to design the buildings, but it was also necessary to completely redo the urban structure of that sector. A new Plan was therefore drawn up, which was approved on July 2, 1962. With this new Plan it seems that exactly the double number of dwellings that had been initially planned in that sector were built.
Parish Church of Sant Jeroni de Montbau

Pau Monguió i Abella, Francesc Vayreda i Bofill

The construction of the church of Montbau does not escape the influence of the European architecture of the time. Not only because the first idea was to propose the architect Le Corbusier for the design - his advanced age was a definitive factor in refusing the commission -, but also because of the construction system chosen by the winning team, formed by the architects Vayreda and Montguió in 1963. The different volumes that make up the program are linked by an outer canopy that unifies the whole and gives a human scale to the accesses, to discover, once inside, a much more important volume. The structure of this interior is solved with a plot of metal pillars with a roof with lowered vaults of reinforced concrete. A technological innovation of the traditional Catalan vault and which had also been the object of study and of subsequent use in some works by Le Corbusier himself, such as the Maisons Jaoul.