Martínez develops a floor with three houses on a site which is irregular and with its façades towards an important road and a small square. The position of the staircase and the lifts, oriented towards the interior courtyard forming a virtual bisector, marks the distribution of the homes, as there are two on one side and a third home on the other. Almost all the rooms face the façade, except for the services and the kitchens, through which small patios are enabled. This fit full of casuistries is translated into the exterior conception of the building through a strong expressionist will, which takes into account the prevailing view from Via Augusta. The second and third floors form a tribune at the corner, while the first floor forms a covered balcony, which is repeated on the fourth floor. The building gently recedes as it rises, at the same time purifying itself and leaving the smooth volumes marked horizontally by the windows from side to side.
The Roca Barallat building is located in the Gràcia district, at the intersection between Via Augusta and Narcís Oller Square. It is a building between partitions on a plot of almost rectangular plan, consisting of commercial basements (currenlty -2014- a tobacco shop), a main floor and 6 residential floors.
The façade where the entrance door is located, which faces Via Augusta, has a similar morphology to the other façade, with an articulation with cubist volumetrics, with several balconies of moderate exterior development and gallery balconies that protrude just like the balconies. The elements that make up the balconies and the galleries (wooden frames and sober bars respectively) have the same color. The doors and windows have been standardised according to GATCPAC models and sizes.
The building concentrates all its potential in the angle of the corner where it resorts to various elements in order to confer great dynamism such as the aforementioned galleries, "bow-windows", balconies with various designs, among others.
Inside, it is organised with three floors per landing with a great development of communication spaces and corridors in order to allow the maximum number of direct exits to the outside.
Among the few works built in Gràcia that in the 1930s tried to assume, in a more or less radical way, the forms and principles of the international avant-garde and the modern movement, the Roca Barallat building really stands out. The project was carried out by the architect Carles Martínez Sánchez, who was a member or linked to the Group of Catalan Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture (GATPAC).
