Harquitectes   Spain   Placed behind the main facade, the staircase shaft functions as a patio that favors natural ventilation while protecting the living space from street noise and disturbances and controlling the views from and to the exterior.

TAKK Architecture   Spain   This thorough revamp of a 50-square-meter flat was carried out with a material budget of only 10,000 euros. Six decisions were made at the outset. The first one was to work with termal gradients in the functional and programmatic layout of the dwelli

BAAS Arquitectura   Spain   Located at Carrer de Pallars 180, in Barcelona’s Poblenou neighborhood, the project sought to give the block a sense of continuity and engage with preexisting elements. A work of BAAS, a Catalan firm led by Jordi Badía, the office building presents a

GCA Architects   Spain   This refurbishment project turns an 1850 industrial building in Barcelona’s Eixample district into offices for Fundació Bofill, a non-profit entity created in 1969 to promote social change. A work of GCA Architects, founded in 1986 by Josep Juanpere

Barceló Balanzó Arquitectes   Spain   The complex is located on Carretera de Ribes, on the northeast of Barcelona, very close to the Nus de Trinitat, which connects Ronda de Dalt with Ronda de Litoral – one of the main and busiest road junctions in the city –, and next to Trinitat Vella

Carles Enrich   Spain   The Rec Comtal is one of the most important hydraulic infrastructures of Barcelona, having suppled the city with water and irrigated the territory of the Besós agricultural basin from the 10th century to the mid-20th. Because of urban growth, a large

Ángel Borrego   Spain   La Carbonería, or Casa Tarragó, is an 1860s apartment building that was taken up by the Okupa Movement from 2004 to 2008, when it was painted on to produce two works of urban art. The 2014 eviction of the squatters was big news and the building becam

SUMO Arquitectes MIM-A Arquitectes   Spain   This new-build school is located in a densely populated area in the Torrassa neighborhood of Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), occupying a very compact rectangular plot surrounded by homes set between party walls and very narrow streets. With a

Batlleiroig   Spain   The new facilities for Barcelona’s Nou Barris and Sant Andreu districts seek to blend into the context, creating a system of green spaces for the zone that emphasize pedestrian routes. The envelope is materialized in brick, playing with openwork and

Narch Arquitectes dataAE Maira Arquitectes   Spain   This social housing block is organized around an atrium-like central void, optimizing energy efficiency while creating opportunities for encounters among neighbors in the same way that the large landings of the stairs do. Undertaken for the Institut

Lacol Arquitectura Cooperativa   Spain   Raised in 1926, these listed old industrial sheds in Barcelona’s Sants neighborhood were used for building naval ships. After undergoing refurbishment, the one that takes up half the block harbors offices of various entities (including Lacol Arquitec

Batlleiroig   Spain   At the foot of the Collserola mountains, this university residence for the British company Vita Student is located in Barcelona's Pedralbes neighborhood. All of its 274 rooms face the exterior. The ventilated facade presents a greenish ceramic finish

SUMA Arquitectura   Spain   The project is located in a dense urban node, and it is precisely the need to adapt to this context that leads to the decision to replicate the chamfer typical of Barcelona’s urban planning. The library appears as a sculptural volume set on a square

Rafael Moneo Lucho Marcial   Spain   The construction of Mercer Hotel, located in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, tried not to disregard structural elements, and to demolish without damaging the remains of the past. The main idea behind the project was to recover the spatial character

Barozzi Veiga   Spain   At Consell de Cent 349, in the Eixample, the first Barcelona store of the Australian cosmetic firm Aesop, founded in Melbourne in 1987, has opened. The firm of the Italian Fabricio Barozzi and the Galician Alberto Veiga did the interiors. A large hig

Peris + Toral arquitectes   Spain   Born out of the Cheap Housing Law of 1929, the Bon Pastor neighborhood went up with 784 one-level homes. Impelled by the Barcelona City Hall's IMHAB (Institut Municipal de l'Habitatge i Rehabilitació), the Bon Pastor Redevelopment Plan involves demol

OMA Octavio Mestre Arquitectos    Spain   A work of OMA Octavio Mestre Arquitectos —Octavio Mestre and Albert Lluch—, the building for the collectible toys company Magic Box has a total area approaching 3,800 square meters. The triangular plan comes from the shape of the corner lot, which in

Pau Vidal Vivas Arquitectos   Spain   Located in the Marina del Prat Vermell neighborhood, this complex contains 32 apartments and spaces for collective use by the Llar Jove Marina Prat Vermel SCCL cooperative. Barcelona City Hall has ceded the site to it for 75 years minimum. The to-be-

IAAC   Spain   The Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and the Italian company WASP (World’s Advanced Saving Project), which specializes in 3D printers, present TOVA, a prototype built with earth and a Crane WASP over a period of seven weeks on t

GCA Architects   Spain   In dialogue with the classic architecture of the Eixample, this thorough revamp turns a 1960s office block into an apartment building. Solar protection and cross ventilation are worked out through a composition of solids and voids. The building’s cen

P-M-A-A    Spain   The new circular skylight is a unique addition that transforms an old and dark space into an atmosphere filled with natural light. Concentrating the program at the corners generates an open-plan space of squared proportions and symmetrical in section

Evvo Retail   Spain   ‘Layers’ of industrial materials – aluminum and concrete – are added to the space that preserves the original walls, in contrast with the elegant and theatrical textures in an atmosphere of pastel colors that uses the curve as a sculptural element...

Jorge Vidal MAIO   Spain   The triangular volume where multiple programs converged is replaced here with a Vierendeel beam-box, which allows opening up the main court – separated from the secondary one by a three-meter rigid box – to the urban space as a multipurpose indoor ha

Josep Maria Montaner   With his multifaceted work, which went far beyond the confines of construction, the eminent architect became one of the leading figures of the Renaixença.

Enrique Morillo   That images are faster than words is a hard-to-refute fact. But it is just as true that, since the classical ekphrasis, visual representations have appeared together with written comments, turning words into usual companions that stress or alter thei

As if to mark the absolute center that Cerdá had in mind for his Eixample, the tower built by Jean Nouvel on the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes has become one of the icons of Barcelona. An observation deck at the top has now opened to the public in w

José María Ezquiaga   Recent Spanish urban planning is sullied by the fact that political debate, professional criticism, and academic analysis have given way to the judicialization of urban problems, dragging into the sphere of legality all matters that really ought to s

With an old loom she purchased from one of the many textile mills that were dying out in the Barcelona of the 1970s, the artist Teresa Lanceta learned to weave and immersed herself in a world of warps and woofs that since then has for her been a sort

Misunderstood genius with a halo of sainthood? Skilled frequenter of bishops and powers-that-be? A great many things have been said about the modernist architect, and many of them are myths. Myths which the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya has taken

With the demise of Oriol Bohigas at 95 years of age goes one of the most influential masters of the second half of the 20th century in Spain, but also an entire manner of understanding the profession, the power, and the sphere that connects them: the

The Guardian   Stephen Burgen   Locals in Barcelona accuse religious foundation in charge of Gaudí‘s masterpiece of highhandedness. A gigantic 12-pointed star was installed on Monday on one of the main towers of the basilica of the Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece that h

Few studios have fared better in reading the panorama of a profession in times of crisis, working with limited budgets, often far from the big cities and with programs that require a genuine dose of sustainability. Indeed, for Harquitectes – establis

As part of the proceedings of the UIA General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona has been announced the winner of the bid to host the World Congress of the International Union of Architects (UIA) and be UIA-UNESCO World Capital of Architecture in

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Hace veinticinco años, en julio de 1996, se celebró en Barcelona el XIX Congreso de la Unión Internacional de Arquitectos, que ante el desbordamiento de asistentes tuvo que celebrar alguna de sus sesiones al aire libre. Luis Fernández-Galiano redactó

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In the ephemeral Glasraum of the Werkbund’s 1927 exhibition in Stuttgart, the dynamic Wrightian space flows between glazed walls that reconcile the expressionist reflections with the transparency of the Sachlichkeit to expose universal truths at the

1924-2020 At the patriarchal age of 96, a leader of the postwar generation of Catalan architects died in the Barcelona where he was born into a bourgeois family that originally came from Comillas and Jerez. Federico Correa was educated under professo

Iñaki Bergera   One could make a family album of Spanish architecture from the Transition to democracy to the dawn of the 21st century using only photographs by Lluís Casals. He had colleagues like Ferrán Freixa, Hisao Suzuki, Duccio Malagamba, or Luis Asín, but Cas

Llátzer Moix   Federico Correa had close links to the panorama of his native Barcelona and was teacher to several generations of architects.

Convinced that the ethical duty of every artist is to question the pillars of the dogma with the tools of uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradiction, William Kentridge (South Africa, 1955) has built a varied creative discourse that has turned him into

Linked to Barcelona, where they have their practice set up and also teach, Miguel Roldán (Ceuta, 1961) and Mercè Berengué (Barcelona, 1962) think of architecture as a fruitful search for possibilities that serves both as a perusal of the different la

1948-2020 On the first of May, in the Barcelona of his birth in 1948, the architect, historian, critic, and publisher Carlos Martí Aris died of the coronavirus. He was a cultural reference for the entire profession and a member of the brilliant gener

Four couples who are friends agreed to be the developers and users of a block containing five dwellings and a sequence of spaces for communal use and interaction. This was the story behind the building that Thomas Lussi and Lola Domènech have raised

It was to highlight the eroded footprint of a 12th-century castle that the Catalan architect Carles Enrich set about restoring the Merola Tower in Puigreig, a municipality of Barcelona province. The project was urgent, following the 2016 collapse of

The primary objective of the EMAV Can Batlló project, designed by Julià i Capdevila, was to open up to the city an exceptional industrial block located in Barcelona’s Bordeta neighborhood. In the process, it respected the typological and material fea

Among the numerous challenges of architecture in this day and age is to redensify and repurpose the industrial fabrics that cropped up and grew on what were then the outskirts of our cities, but which are now embedded and trapped in the very heart of

‘Big Bang Building Light!’ is an artistic intervention by Mario Pasqualotto that redraws the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona with lines of light. Visitors are welcome, for free, until 16 February (except for 13 February), from 18:30 to 20:00.

Espinet / Ubach Arquitectes (ed.)   Últimas obras y proyectos 2007-2022

Elizabeth Kolbert   Cómo los humanos estamos creando la naturaleza del futuro

Michael Shellenberger   Por qué el alarmismo medioambiental nos perjudica a todos

Luis Martínez Santa-María   Barcelona  2021  
Fundación Mies van der Rohe   - 202 Pages 

Fernando Quesada   La contracultura arquitectónica a escena

Claire Beck Loos   Barcelona  2018  
Mudito & Co.   - 148 Pages 

Barcelona  2021  
Acantilado   - 320 Pages 

Ignacio Paricio   Carlos Ferrater & OAB

Fernanda Canales   Privacidad en un mundo compartido

Eduardo Carrero   Historia viva de un espacio arquitectónico

Pere Joan Ravetllat Mira   Habitatge i Ciutat

Francesc Pernas Galí   Lecciones en Barcelona 1965-1980

Carolina Beatriz García Estévez Josep M. Rovira Enrique Granell   Arquitectos, viajes e intercambios

Jorge Carrión   Libro de los pasajes

Luis Alonso   The history of a transformation

Projectes i obres de la Mancomunitat de Municipis Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona

Joseph Rykwert   Londres  2000  
Weidenfeld & Nicolson   - 283 Pages 

Barcelona   1998  
COAC   - 84 Pages 

Gustau Gili Galfetti    Células domésticas experimentales

Barcelona   1997  
COAC   - 168 Pages