How to get there
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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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.
Suggestion box
Request the image
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.
close
-
Single-Family Homes on the Montbau Estate
-
- Author:
- Joan Bosch i Agustí
-
- Type:
- Drawing
-
- Fonds / Held by:
- Arxiu Històric del COAC
-
close
Memory
Built in the third and last phase of the Montbau planning, although they were already contemplated in the initial project, they occupy the highest part of the estate, where the land has more slope. These 70 stepped houses form a set of white volumes with terraces and are arranged in the shape of a fan, following the contours. This is an atypical typology, straddling the garden city and a compact building. The regularity of its planning is interfered with by the topography of the place and forces to break the linearity of the corridors, incorporating stairs, creating a singular, adapted mesh. Resolving this complexity also creates bridges that run beneath homes. The vegetation that is planted around these built elements represents a continuity and complement of the natural set of the forest characteristic of the slope where it is located. The functional program is solved with 3 different typologies, between 90 and 120 m2, in duplex. The size of the corridor allows the construction with load-bearing walls, thus maintaining the space in between the open space.
The case of the terraced houses in Montbau, designed by Joan Bosch i Agustí in 1963, could well be an example made from the perspective of a holiday village. Its position on the wooded slope of Montbau, the white colour of the volumes and the profusion of terraces resulting from the steps contribute to it. This set of 50 duplex homes seems to want to explore a shorter distance between the units, not as scattered as in a garden city or so close as to end up being judged as a single building, a block.
However, paradoxically, it is. Built by the Barcelona Municipal Housing Board and completed in 1968, these homes are actually a building, only on the slope. In this one it dominates the regularity and the repetition instead of the picturesque thing and the singular thing. But the regularity is nuanced due to the shape of the terrain, both by the general arrangement as a fan - as they occupy an angle of the slope that forces the passages to break their linearity - and by the appearance of stairs to save the slope, which ends up forming a peculiar mesh between them, the passages and, of course, the houses.
But, probably, the uniqueness of this grouping lies mainly in the impression produced by the passages running under the houses. Thus, bridges are formed that are essential to assimilate the whole to a peculiar warp of stairs, passages and houses. If we look at the whole strictly from the point of view of the functional distribution of the houses, we can describe it as a group of rooms parallel to the passages and a group of kitchens and living rooms perpendicular to the slope and, therefore, parallel to the stairs.
Authors
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. -
FAD Award
Shortlisted. Category: ArchitectureSingle-Family Homes on the Montbau EstateSingle-Family Homes on the Montbau Estate
Built in the third and last phase of the Montbau planning, although they were already contemplated in the initial project, they occupy the highest part of the estate, where the land has more slope. These 70 stepped houses form a set of white volumes with terraces and are arranged in the shape of a fan, following the contours. This is an atypical typology, straddling the garden city and a compact building. The regularity of its planning is interfered with by the topography of the place and forces to break the linearity of the corridors, incorporating stairs, creating a singular, adapted mesh. Resolving this complexity also creates bridges that run beneath homes. The vegetation that is planted around these built elements represents a continuity and complement of the natural set of the forest characteristic of the slope where it is located. The functional program is solved with 3 different typologies, between 90 and 120 m2, in duplex. The size of the corridor allows the construction with load-bearing walls, thus maintaining the space in between the open space.
Archive
-
Drawing
Single-Family Homes on the Montbau Estate
Arxiu Històric del COAC
Bibliography
Related Works (15)
Set Polígon Montbau | Polígon Montbau: Urbanització de 70 Habitatges Unifamiliars
