All the buildings in one

Recently, the repair work of the friezes of the Official College of Architects of Catalonia (COAC) has been completed with the drawings that Pablo Picasso designed for the low volume of the building. An ingenious operation that will divert the possible corrosion of the iconic reinforced concrete pediment towards metal pieces that can be easily changed to extend the useful life of the artistic work.

With the replacement of the facades in 2018 and the interior renovation completed in 2023, the building completes a comprehensive rehabilitation almost without altering its urban form after more than 60 years of life.

Located in front of the Cathedral Avenue in Barcelona, ​​the headquarters of the architects of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands was inaugurated in 1962, after a very competitive competition, with renowned participants and a prestigious jury chaired by Manuel de Solà-Morales and with the presence of figures such as Antonio Bonet Castellana or Gio Ponti, among other renowned architects of the modern movement of the mid-20th century.

The winning project was that of Xavier Busquets i Sindreu, with a simple proposal consisting of a low volume of two and a half floors high (that of Picasso’s famous frieze) intended for public uses and a rectangular prismatic body of 7 more floors for offices and offices. Time has gradually confirmed that this apparent simplicity is what has probably allowed it to coexist in a friendly way with the urban environment.

The low volume is the one that respects the alignments of the two side streets, Carrer dels Capellans and Carrer dels Arcs, while the high volume in the form of a pure rectangular prism is parallel to the facades that face the Cathedral, which causes two of its corners to protrude in the form of a cantilever above the pediment.

The rest of the proposals that were submitted to this competition are a good example of the difficulties of resolving the urban fit and the geometry of the building. However, despite the few instructions that were given, many participants decided to divide the building into two volumes, one low and the other high, proposing different alignments of the larger volume. Among some participants the differences are subtle, deciding to rotate the high volume a little more or place it perpendicular instead of parallel, which shows that certain decisions in a project, however small they may be, tip the scales of a jury’s decision. In the similarity of the projects, it is also interesting to verify the existence of certain compositional trends seen today from a distance.

Observing the Colon Building today allows us to recognize some of the trends that we saw in the COAC building

Just eight years after its construction, in 1970 the tallest building in Barcelona at that time was inaugurated, the Colon Building, by the architect Josep Ribas González, with 28 floors and 110 meters high and magnificent views of the Rambla, Montjuïc and the sea. Observing it today allows us to recognize some of the trends that we saw in the COAC building.

The base of the tower is very similar: a blind pediment of reinforced concrete, two or three floors high, also raised on a transparent glass base, which aligns with Drassanes, Montserrat and Cervelló streets. In this case, instead of Picasso’s silkscreens there is a composition of prefabricated pieces, repeating a pattern with more than likely Cubist inspiration.

On this pedestal stands the tall body, 22 stories high, independent of the direction of the streets and which literally twists around on the base, since the faces of the prism are striated surfaces like a flag waving in the wind. The view from below is disturbing, since the general fall of the facade is perceived in an achieved sensation of instability. The building is topped off with a volume with an irregular hexagonal plan, three stories high, which recalls an airport control tower and which again takes different directions with respect to the base and the shaft of the building, increasing the sensation of rotation.

Save for the difference in height, the view of the Colon Building as a whole seems to bring together all the possible solutions that the participants in the Col·legi d’Arquitectes competition had to try and discard before finally settling on one. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the superposition of the two main prismatic volumes, twinned with each other, as if the author did not quite know which one to settle on, tracing the plan of the previous version over the current one in an infinite loop. The upper, capped volume could seem like a turning mechanism that would allow, even today, to make one more turn around the chosen solution.

The facade, in addition, bears a striking resemblance to the original COAC, with a very similar proportion of windows and a fluted sill almost identical to the original COAC before the 2018 replacement. The vertical substructure of the facade in the case of the Colon Building is superimposed on the exterior, helping to express the torsion of the regulated surface, in a final attempt by the building to get rid of the eternal rigidity that the stone granted it.