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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Historical Archive which, thanks to its documental richness, provides a large amount of valuable –and in some cases unpublished– graphic documentation.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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Noves Façanes per a El Corte Inglés
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- Author:
- MBM Arquitectes
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- Type:
- Drawing
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- Fonds / Held by:
- Fons MBM / Arxiu Històric del COAC
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- Rights:
- © Fons MBM / Arxiu Històric del COAC
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Memory
Department stores are growing and the city asks for a new façade.
We spent several months trying to find a civil palatine façade, with a tower or bell tower, like those in the other buildings in Catalunya Square; incorporating memories of New York buildings (Wollworth, Rockefeller Center)..., Rome’s Rinascente, or some of F. Gehry in Boston, or even quieter ones…
The façade is made of salmon beige granite, like the letters with the logo at the top of the corner. The plinth that covers the ground floor and the continuous eaves that protect it are made of brass. At the same corner the eaves rise like the wing of a hat.
The south corner of the extension is a project of the MBM architecture studio, with horizontal rings on the last three floors.
However, after a couple of hours of work, the façade of the interior of the block came easily. It is the façade that covers the evacuation stairs and the installation ducts and is covered with die-cast aluminum plates such as the radiator shutter of the Seat 600 car. Something similar happens in the Eixample’s courtyards: they are elementary and useful, as little in need of representation and ostentation as is the case on street façades.
The slabs and granite of the street façades are the same size to fit together when they meet.
New Façades for El Corte Inglés
A new tailor-made suit, due to the new circumstances of expansion and adaptation that the building is experiencing.
A new volume from the annexation of three adjoining estates, the renovation of the facilities and the adaptation of the whole to the new fire regulations.
The existing volume is modified in its last floors going back like the attics and upper attics of Barcelona, so that it visually reduces its presence in the corner of the square with Passeig de Gràcia. These indentations extend to both sides of the corner.
On one of these jumps and in the curve of the façade the poster of the department stores built in stone is placed, following the plan of the façade.
A tower that houses the machinery of the new elevators coexists with the other towers, of medieval palatine appearance, of the bank buildings of the square. The tower is topped by the company’s calligraphic sign as a ridge, also as an extension of the façade.
The suit is a new granite cladding similar in colour to that of Montjuïc, with which most of the city’s bourgeois buildings in the Eixample were built.
The 80x130 cladding is placed on the door and highlights its vertical joint. This same fragmentation is used on the rear façade with a deployé that covers all the installations. In some recessed volumes of the main façade, stone and deployé are intertwined.
The windows, which are the width of the stones, are placed on the offices, the fire stairs and, almost arbitrarily, on the rest of the façade. A bronze plinth throughout the building collects emergency exits, entrances, and shop windows. The plinth is topped by a canopy that rises like the wing of a hat when it reaches the corner, where the main entrance is located.
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FAD Award
Finalist. Category: ArchitectureNew Façades of El Corte InglésMartínez Lapeña-Torres Arquitectos, MBM Arquitectes, Oriol Bohigas i Guardiola, David Mackay, José Antonio Martínez Lapeña, Josep Maria Martorell i Codina, Elías Torres Tur
New Façades of El Corte Inglés
Martínez Lapeña-Torres Arquitectos, MBM Arquitectes, Oriol Bohigas i Guardiola, David Mackay, José Antonio Martínez Lapeña, Josep Maria Martorell i Codina, Elías Torres Tur
Department stores are growing and the city asks for a new façade. We spent several months trying to find a civil palatine façade, with a tower or bell tower, like those in the other buildings in Catalunya Square; incorporating memories of New York buildings (Wollworth, Rockefeller Center)..., Rome’s Rinascente, or some of F. Gehry in Boston, or even quieter ones… The façade is made of salmon beige granite, like the letters with the logo at the top of the corner. The plinth that covers the ground floor and the continuous eaves that protect it are made of brass. At the same corner the eaves rise like the wing of a hat. The south corner of the extension is a project of the MBM architecture studio, with horizontal rings on the last three floors. However, after a couple of hours of work, the façade of the interior of the block came easily. It is the façade that covers the evacuation stairs and the installation ducts and is covered with die-cast aluminum plates such as the radiator shutter of the Seat 600 car. Something similar happens in the Eixample’s courtyards: they are elementary and useful, as little in need of representation and ostentation as is the case on street façades. The slabs and granite of the street façades are the same size to fit together when they meet.
Archive
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Drawing
Noves Façanes per a El Corte Inglés
© Fons MBM / Arxiu Històric del COAC
Related Works
Set El Corte Inglés