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Turo de la Rovira - endangered - a unique town-like urbanisation on a hill in the center
of the Barcelona area. Really nice buildings. Is to be destructed
for "public park".
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Traversera de Dalt - endangered
- this jewel at a six-lane city axis is endangered by speculation. First
the little park around it shall get crossed with a road. Who needs space
to breath anyway? "Parks" will get pushed outside the residential
areas onto the hills where everything else will be eliminated.
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Casa Rosa, Montjuic - destroyed
on July 4th, 2002 - this was one of my favorite buildings. A lone house
on a hill with not much around. Could have been scene of a film noire.
The special thing about it was the all around windows, which is very unusual
for a urban building like this. Also on three sides one had a view over
Barcelona.
A public garden is planned here.
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Hospital
Militar - modernized
- I don't know what
is happening here, but it looks bad. Some surrounding jewels of early
century buildings have already been demolished.
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La
Clota
- endangered
- Another
town-like district from the old times. Hidden in Vall d'Hebron.
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Ronda de Dalt - A school building. A little bad
in shape, but alive and kicking. (Only there is this halfway-tunnelled
TEN-lane highway in front)
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Montgat - Outside of Barcelona, just after Badalona.
This is a wonderful little urbanisation between the beach and the national
road. There you can find very tasteful old and new buildings that go very
well with each other. The lower part is a beach town with lodges, gardens
and little paths in between.
Hi. I moved to Barcelona because of its nice ambience emerging from architecture and nature. Barcelona without doubt has got some of the most beautiful buildings. Mostly it's the about 100 years old houses that take care for a movie-like and very comfortable scenery. The hills are urbanised with plenty of cute and playful constructions.
But strange wise this is not what the Barcelonese government is proud of. In fact most Barcelonese don't even know about their heritage. Many old houses rot and often get torn down to be replaced by a brutalist, inhuman architecture that wants to symbolise the connection to modernity. This taste bases in the error that pure functionality would still be the sign of the times in Europe while in Northern Europe this now is a past attitude.
Still some of the new buildings show innovation, but they all have in common a rather inhuman and cold style. It seams that the taste of the Catalans has turned 180 degrees in the times of oppression by the Franco regime.
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OTHER INITIATIVES
Plataforma Civica i Veinal de la Font d'en Fargas i el Turo de la Rovira d'Horta Guinardo.
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Book by Stefanie von Heeren on demolitions in the old town:
La Remodelación de Ciutat Vella, Un Análisis crítico del modelo Barcelona (spanish)
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This site is not against urban speculation
I am not against a certain degree of construction for the purpose of making money. If Diagonal Mar and the destruction of old houses would generate money, so be it, but I am not sure.
Diagonal Mar, Maremagnum, Pueblo Olympico, Glories, all are catastrophies in architecture that make people joke about Barcelona. The town has a reputation as being creative, because of Gaudi and many other thing. But not because of its new architecture.
I am not against the destruction of buildings that hinder the generation of capital, but the reason for the broad destruction of beautifull buildings in Barcelona is an irrational antipathy towards old architecture.
| DIAGONAL MAR Special | |
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| Diagonal Mar is the latest urbanisation project supported by a very large image campaign. An area of about five very large building blocks gets de- and reconstructed in one go. | |
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Diagonal Mar - I must admit, this is a to me sympathic
building, but the only one at Diagonal Mar. It looks filigree and is all
"Florida-white". It has view on the ocean.
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Badalona - This is what you see when you enter BCN
from the north by car. It looks like pure functional architecture resulting
from shortness in lodging. But it rather is part of a technological heroism
like it was dreamt in Brasilia/Brazil. And it is still going on.
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Trinitat
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Barcelona
suburbia is full of this. Often people
have their living room more or less
on the highway.
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Conference
Centre Diagonal -
This
is a great building. It might appear cold at first sight, but it is full
of humor and play. Say nobody there would be no fun in building here anymore.
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Plaça
Joanic -
A
curiosity. The accidental tower at Pl. Joanic. I really like it, especially
the idea of living at the top.
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Torre
Agbar -
OK,
this building is not blocky and has got much humor and a playful setting
of windows. I support this building, but I am afraid it went over the
goal. The people will not like to hear all of the comments on this skyscraper.
I am afraid, after this is standing, more citizen will call for fewer
experiments in architecture again.
Vallcarca
- This
is a very typical example of the fashion in Barcelonese architecture.
In fact it is tasteful. But the small windows and blocky structure makes
it just not nice to live there. It may give the city a modern and clear
face, but why dismiss the playfulness the world loves of Barcelona?