Christian Bruhn & Henrike Wettner
MELA Designzentrum Barcelona. RWTH Aachen (Germany)
Topic
In 2009 the `Plan Cerdà´ for Barcelona´s Eixample becomes 150 years old. One of its most representative spaces is the ` Plaça Glòries´, central point of a semicircle of miscellaneous urban densification processes in the area Poble Nou.
The moment of this peculiar place, square of high symbolic value, seems to rise…
As `Ciutat Vella´ is overcrowded, urban planning envisions to relieve the gothic city center by creating places of new centrality. The most prominent is the `Plaça Glòries´, where according to the reorganization of the square the `Designmuseum Barcelona´ had to be planned.
Identity
The search for site-specific elements at `Plaça Glòries´ did not bear any results… As Ciutat Vella with its medieval structure founded its style in the Gothic, the Eixample articulates itself through its quadratic rasterized structure and modernistic architecture. Which place identity is characteristic for the future allegory for a metropolis of science?
The site-inspection pointed out a lack of scale and heterogeneity. The image is affected by architectural contrasts, an unstructured wideness and diverse areas, that do not connect with `Plaça Glòries´ properly.
The demographic analysis with its different inhabitant groups, social background, mode of life and requirements led to a compilation of `neighborhood profiles´, that were respected within the architecture.
In 1859 the `Plan Cerdà´ illustrated the conjunction of suburbs with the Old Town by the Eixample and the finding of a street hierarchy – both characteristic for the present image of Barcelona.
The `manzana´ - smallest unity of the Eixample – is the architectural vision of Cerdà as a paradigm of his social ideology; designed as an open living block they should function as `gardens of approximation´.
Concept and architecture
These parameters led to a superordinate concept in order to develop the urban reorganization of the area and to find the architectural style of the Designmuseum.
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