“Barcelona, ​​architectures of a city.” Invited City of Honor at the Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennnial

The exhibition "Barcelona, ​​architectures of a city" will show the relationship between architecture and social movements. These enhance the profile of the architect who intends to transform the social and urban relations of the city. In addition to the exhibition, there will be a series of conferences, including Daniel Mòdol, Councilor for Architecture, Urban Landscape and Heritage; the Councilor for Housing; Josep Maria Montaner, and the architects Mar Santamaria and Adrià Goula.

Barcelona/ Buenos Aires, September 26, 2017. In classical Greece, those who cared only about their private interests rather than the public ones were called "idiots." In the last decades, Barcelona has entered a process of transformation of urban space in which public interests were prioritized for the benefit of all citizens.

With this framework, an exhibition, a cycle of lectures and an academic program, organized by the Barcelona City Council and the Institut Ramon Llull, are the center of Barcelona's participation as a guest city of honor at the Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennial 2017, which will take place from the 9th to 20th of October.

The main theme of the exhibition and the conferences that the Catalan capital will present in Buenos Aires, as well as the academic program that will accompany these actions, will be "Barcelona, ​​architectures of a city", in accordance with the project "Barcelona Architecture, City Heritage“ which is being developed by the Barcelona City Council to put in value the architecture and heritage of the city. The Catalan participation will address the concept of heritage, which goes beyond historical protection and aims to highlight the undoubted value that architecture, public space and urban landscape mean for society. The Barcelona City Council will announce its objectives in this area, both from the perspective of preservation and knowledge, as well as from intervention and new actions.

The exhibition "Barcelona, ​​architectures of a city"
A selection of five projects will be presented, exemplifying the themes and complicities generated by the interaction between architecture and the architect with the citizens. The La Borda housing cooperative, the Fort Pienc facilities, the Turó de la Rovira restoration, the refurbishment of the Fabra i Coats factory and the Torre Júlia housing for older people, are projects that have in common the economy of resources and a particular sensitivity to materials and collective uses.

The exhibition also shows the appropriation of the users, who often motivated the main transformations of the city, focusing on the public space and its political dimension. The square that welcomes the visitor in the exhibition wants to be a vivid reminder of these citizen roots, inviting a shared look between Barcelona and Buenos Aires.

In the exhibition design, proposed by the commissioners David Aceves, Ariel Cavilli and Toni Casassas, the initial square leads the visitor to a large structure in the shape of a wooden cube and a large table that configures the space for reading and for academic activities. Inside the cube is projected an audiovisual piece that collects the testimonies of architects and users of the selected projects. On the outside of the structure is the documentation and information from each project.

- Torre Júlia, 2006 (project), 2009-2011 (work) 
Architects: Sergi Pons, Pau Vidal and Ricard Galiana

La Torre Júlia, in the neighborhood of La Prosperitat, solved a social problem prioritizing the use of community spaces. The settlement, which articulated four neighborhoods between roads and major traffic avenues, required the typology of a tower, rethought to adapt to a use of sheltered housing for older people in a meager land. The alignment of the tower was in tune with the direction of the land, which will host future public swimming pools. The idea was to group the building into three communities, each with a double height meeting space on the edge of the tower and visible from the front. The architects thought in each plant spaces of socialization.

- Cooperativa La Borda, 2017-2018 
Architects: La Col, formed by Arnau Andrés, Eliseu Arrufat, Ari Artigas, Carles Baiges, Anna Clemente, Lali Daví, Cristina Gamboa, Ernest Garriga, Mirko Gegundez, Laura Lluch, Lluc Hernàndez, Pol Massoni, Jordi Miró and Núria Vila

La Borda was born in the context of mobilizations of Can Batlló as a neighborhood cooperative aimed at promoting housing under a cession of use regime. For the cooperative of architects La Col, the participation of the real users of La Borda throughout the process, design, materialization and use, was essential. La Col and La Borda were fully penetrated in a laboratory of social and neighborhood transformation. The vision of both cooperatives was to encourage community life and a sustainable construction system, betting on wood as a material and an environmental device that worked as a greenhouse, providing heat in winter. In summer, overheating is avoided by evacuating the heat like a chimney through a superior ventilation. The project was funded through solidarity economy, ethical banking and contributions from entities and individuals.

- Fort Pienc, 2001-2003 
Architect: Josep Llinàs

In a neighborhood that lacked facilities, it was decided to concentrate in one block several buildings of this type: a retirement home, a civic center with a library and a nursery. The Fort Pienc project was executed between 2001 and 2003, adding to the complex a market and a secondary school. The singular starting point of the building was to conceive it as a square, now the identity center of the neighborhood. The success achieved in Fort Pienc caused the City Council to replicate the same idea in other projects of the city.

- Turó de la Rovira, 2011 
Architects: Jansana De la Villa, Paauw Arquitectes, AAUP Jordi Romero Associates.

The project focused on the recovery of landscape memory. Turó de la Rovira is a hill located in a protected area and a green lung of the city. This space, previously abandoned and residual, became an exceptional viewpoint over the city. The proposal sought to preserve the remains of the republican anti-aircraft battery that Barcelona defended during the civil war. At the same time, a second stratum was preserved, popularly known as the "Canyons", the barracks that settled from the 1950s and were demolished in 1989. The project also shows an older third layer of exploitation agricultural hill. This is a landscape in the process of decomposition and this idea reinforces the use of iron and deactivated concrete, materials that show its wear.

- Fabra i Coats, 2011 
Architects: Manuel Ruisánchez and Francesc Bacardit

The public mobilization of Amics de la Fabra i Coats and other neighborhood entities paid off when it got the City Hall to buy the whole enclosure and thus stop the demolition of the old factory. In the renovation of the central nave, the original volumes were restored to privilege a primitive vision of the factory, built in 1910. The intention to recover the memory ran throughout the project; austere and contained in the introduction of new elements, so that the passage of time became valuable. Fabra i Coats was carried out with a reduced budget to enable the spaces to the uses of a factory of creation and the diverse needs of visual artists, musicians and dancers.

Conferences at the Biennial

October 10, Art Factory

Daniel Mòdol, councillor of Architecture, Urban Landscape and Patrimony of the City council of Barcelona. Barcelona, ​​architectures of a city
Mar Santamaria. 10 (possible) ways how Barcelona could disappear.
Adrià Goula. Re-build.
Oscar Guayabero. The city as a space of happiness.
Ramon Faura Coll. The other architecture (questions from a house-museum).
Josep Maria Montaner, councillor of Housing of the City council of Barcelona. Contemporary Barcelona: culture of inhabiting and public space.

October 12, Power Plant.

Flowers & Prats Architects. The discipline of what exists. About the new Sala Beckett in Barcelona.