The modernity of the Old Town
Tradition and modernity go hand in hand in a district, Ciutat Vella, where remains that encompass and explain much of our past coexist. The oldest take us back to that military settlement on the slopes of Mount Táber where the colony of Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino was established. From that era, we can still see in situ the Columns of the Temple of Augustus, which today are the main attraction of the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, as well as other archaeological remains of Roman Barcelona that are found in the plaza de la villa de Madrid and in the Barcelona History Museum.
Over the centuries, the prosperity of the colony gradually increased until it became medieval Barcelona. In this long period, what we know today as the Ciutat Vella district was completed: El Raval, the Gothic Quarter and Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera, and with them, landscapes such as the Jewish quarter, the church of Santa María del Mar, and the oldest part of the Barcelona Cathedral.
It is within the boundaries of the walled Barcelona where we now zoom in to learn about buildings erected or refurbished in the last 30 years, which have drawn from movements such as the avant-garde or rationalism to make this area of Barcelona a place where the new integrates with the classic.
MACBA
One of the buildings that can most attract the attention of visitors is the MACBA, which completely breaks with the prevailing architecture in the Raval. The building that houses the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art was designed by architect Richard Meier, who conceived it with typical elements of Mediterranean rationalist architecture, combining interior spaces with natural light. It was planned in 1990 and built between 1991 and 1995. With this design, Meier formally reinterprets rationalism, with clear references to masters of the modern movement such as Le Corbusier. Spanning 14,300 m2 the building combines rectilinear elements with curved and undulating ones, where natural light plays a major role, entering the building through open galleries and skylights.
CCCB (Charity House)
Just a few meters from the Macba, we find another avant-garde building for the neighborhood in which it is located. It is the Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre, one of the city's major cultural infrastructures, a space for creation, research, dissemination, and debate of contemporary culture, where different artistic disciplines are interconnected in an interdisciplinary program. The CCCB is housed in a former 12th-century church that became a convent, then a Jesuit seminary, and finally, a charitable hospice known as the Casa de la Caridad.
The rehabilitation process meant that the project won the FAD Design Award in 1993. Among the most notable elements of the enclosure, its gigantic glazed facade, with its play of mirrors and reflections as a metaphor for the transformation of the urban landscape without losing its essence.
Blanquerna School of Communication
We continue without leaving the Raval neighborhood to review two interconnected buildings such as the Faculty of Communication and International Relations Blanquerna (Ramon Llull University) and its library, in an annex building located 100 meters from the campus. And the fact is that if the Eixample has the so-called Quadrat d’Or, we could say that the Raval has its own Contemporary Quadrat, in a space bounded by Montalegre street, Tallers street, and Ronda Sant Antoni, where all the buildings mentioned so far are concentrated. The building of the Faculty of Communication was inaugurated in 1994 in the Joan Corominas square, right in front of the CCCB and the MACBA. It is a property with a rectangular shape designed to make the most of daylight hours, as evidenced by the fact that all the classrooms have been placed on the exterior of the building. It is a building completely open in its common areas, such as the cafeteria-restaurant and the staircase area, which have large windows that allow the movement of people through the building to be seen from the outside.
Almost 20 years later, in 2011, the new university library was inaugurated at the intersection of Tallers and Montalegre streets, an elegant building where functionality and expressiveness come together in an environmentally respectful framework. Noteworthy in this work are its two main facades. The first features a curtain wall made of a metallic fabric that reduces solar radiation by 50% and emits golden reflections depending on its exposure to the sun. On the other side, a large glass window integrates the building into the Terenci Moix square, a new space reclaimed for the citizens.
Santa Caterina Market
Design and functionality at the service of the citizens in the Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera neighborhood. The Santa Caterina Market is one of the most visited spaces in the city. Beneath its spectacular undulating roof, this avant-garde building at the beginning of El Born conceals a traditional food market. The current building dates from 2005 and is a remodeling of the old Santa Caterina market, which supplies one of Barcelona's most popular neighborhoods, El Born, on a daily basis. This market was the first covered market in Barcelona and was established in 1845 on the ruins of an old convent. The renovation was carried out by the prestigious Miralles-Tagliabue architectural studio, which designed a wavy structure inspired by Gaudí, eye-catching and full of color to be seen from above. The roof merges with the market through wooden structures that give an avant-garde touch to a space as traditional as a food market.
These are just a few examples of how avant-garde movements carve out a space in our architecture to the point of integrating into a landscape that is, seemingly, as antagonistic as the old quarter, which they have turned into one of the most modern in Barcelona. After all, 2,000 years is nothing.
