The Palace of the Sick

Like so many other buildings and infrastructures in Barcelona, ​​the Palau de la Música Catalana was built between 1905 and 1908 thanks to the contribution of private capital that sponsored talent and the need for spaces for culture. The Orfeó Català, founded a decade earlier by Lluís Millet and Amadeu Vives, sought to build an emblematic space that lived up to the recognition and expectations it had generated.

We could say that the Palau already existed before the building itself. And despite the technological advances in lighting and scenography, in sound and recording, in technical safety requirements for shows and in fire or acoustic comfort regulations that have appeared since its inauguration, the building has been adapted and configured to continue being the palace for music that its founders imagined. The use of the building is what keeps it alive and gives it meaning today.

A few years before the start of the works on the Palau de la Música, the same architect who conceived it, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, had been commissioned to design the new headquarters of the Hospital de Sant Pau i la Santa Creu in the recently annexed Sant Martí district of Barcelona. The two works, the Palau de la Música and the Hospital de Sant Pau, coincided in time during their construction.

The site initially consisted of 13 buildings separated from each other by medical specialties to which 6 more buildings designed by his son, Pere Domènech i Roura, would later join.

The complex was strictly aligned to the cardinal axes, that is, rotated 45 degrees with respect to the orthogonal grid of Barcelona’s Eixample, which also gave rise to a peculiar oblique avenue that connects the entrance to the hospital complex with Gaudí’s Sagrada Família.

The orientation of the pavilions reflected the tradition of anti-tuberculosis architecture, which despite the recent discovery of Koch’s bacillus and its vaccine continued to entrust architecture with a healing and restorative power. The main facades placed the main rooms on the south to receive more sunlight, while the circulation and services were located on the northern facades at the back.

But what was truly revolutionary about the new hospital was its subsoil. The apparent isolation of the pavilions on the surface concealed a network of tunnels and underground galleries that connected all the pavilions to each other, allowing them to pass under cover between them, distribute connections or locate new uses.

Sometimes, being declared a World Heritage Site is more of a curse than a privilege

There are paradigmatic examples of great buildings in the history of architecture that owe their functioning and their apparent external simplicity to the network they hide underground. Even entire cities in cold climates like Canada or Russia have an intricate network of underground streets that allow life to continue during the harsh winters, despite the harsh weather conditions outside.

But since 2009, the pavilions designed by Domènech i Montaner are no longer part of the Hospital de Sant Pau. It was moved to a relatively small space in the northern corner of the site, in a colorful fan-shaped building. The official explanation is that medical technology required new, larger and better connected spaces.

Compared to the fate of the Palau de la Música, it is inevitable that we wonder about the capacity of the old Hospital de Sant Pau building to adapt to new technologies. It is hard to believe that an interconnected basement and spacious pavilions with hygienic and healthy conditions that have lasted almost a century cannot continue to have a hospital use, at least residential or healthcare. Even more so seeing what they have become today: a museum of themselves.

In an ostentatious sacralization of modernist architecture that prevents any action there, it has now become known as the “Modernist Precinct”. The official images of the place show empty, unpolluted spaces, closer to a Japanese garden or the interiors of a souvenir shop. In fact, many of the spaces are rented out for companies or fashion events, as has already happened at Casa Batlló or La Pedrera. Sometimes, being declared a World Heritage Site is more of a curse than a privilege.

A few days ago, a good friend who has been living outside the country for years wrote to me. While visiting the city, he wanted to return to the Hospital de Sant Pau, where years ago he said goodbye to his brother, very young, a victim of a ruthless disease. Those were months of struggles, hopes and resignations.

However, for her, visiting the hospital continued to be healing. Watching the transfers of patients and the activity of doctors and nursing staff in the corridors, seeing how life made its way to save other lives. In moments of rest, she remembers walking around the outside of the pavilions, comforted in some way by the quiet of its gardens and the serenity of its architecture, which was undoubtedly part of the will of its authors.

Reusing a building to give it another use is something legitimate and certainly desirable for many architectural typologies, even use as a museum. We all know examples of house-museums or museums for the exhibition of art or collecting. But mummifying the building itself is closer to taxidermy than to architecture.

Today my friend has to pay an entrance fee to see a museum, more like a mausoleum, stripped of everything that gave it meaning and value.