List of buildings to visit when next in Barcelona

If you live in Barcelona and find that you are no longer able to get lost in the Barrio Gotico then check out my "Saturday Adventures in Barcelona" posts for lots of great places to discover and get lost in. You could also make me jealous by visiting the places I had planned to visit but never did...

Olympic Archery Range, Vall d'Hebrón, Barcelona - Enrique Miralles & Carme Pinós


Velòdrom d’Horta


Alvaro Siza Swimming Pools, Cornella


Olympic Swimming Pools, Montjuic.


you might have guessed that since I haven't visited these places the photos are not my own. I will keep adding to this post because I can't remember the rest...

BCN Saturday Adventures 02

number 02 - colònia güell

On this Saturday we decided it was time to visit the famous Colònia Güell; The modernist textile industrial estate which incorporates worker's houses commissioned by Eusebi Güell. It is rare to visit an industrial estate and houses built for factory workers and dream that one day you could live there too...


It wasn't the famous Gaudi crypt that did it for me (although of course that is pretty impressive - more on that later), it was the houses that were originally built for the factory workers;

A brick lover's heaven...

If only I could spend my days walking around this place, dragging my hands along its brickwork,
hugging the chimneys and rounded off corners,


sketching the little details,...


We also visited the famous crypt. It is extremely photogenic, but I've seen so many images of it it doesn't feel as exciting to post them, doesn't feel like anything new.
I guess that is the problem with Gaudi, he's kind of like the Elvis of Architects, everybody knows about him without necessarily appreciating his music and when in Memphis you must visit Graceland. And just like Graceland the crypt is so crowded that one struggles to take a photograph which doesn't have strangers strolling though it...


But having said that, the detail, shapes and materials are beautiful... I would like to turn it upside down and sleep inside the vaults.


(notice the similarities between the columns and trees in the background.)

And inside...



I only took photos of the ceilings, not only because they are my favourite part, but also because you can't tell that the place was packed with tourists, or perhaps the latter is the reason for the former.

BCN Saturday Adventures 03

number 03 - Parc del Guinardó and Parc dels Tres Turons

One Saturday we picked up some food from the Boqueria and headed to Parc del Guinardó in the North of Barcelona, up high on the hills. Needless to say it's a lovely park with lovely views of the city, a nice change in perspective from the views from Montjuic and Tibidabo.

We kept on walking uphill until we couldn't get higher and came across this odd place on the hill above the park...

Strange circular concrete foundations and thick walls covered in graffiti,


seemed to be the favourite hang-out location for the local teenage goths,


and people with lots of spare shoes and nothing to do...


The place fascinated me, its so much fun to encounter places like these in today's cities for so many reasons, I think the main one being the excitement of finding an abandoned spot, an unknown place (which the tourists don't know about!) and being so high up with incredible views, almost alone.


It reminded me of antiaircraft posts used by the British in Malta during the 2nd WW, long since abandoned and covered in graffiti, but I thought the position odd because it seemed like the guns would be aiming over the city - the ones I know in Malta face out to sea. We assumed that it was an old site for radio transmitters or something like that.


I've now discovered that they were antiaircraft batteries used during the Spanish Civil War in the thirties. It's incredible that nobody knew what we were talking about when we described it, especially considering the Catalans have been so deeply scarred by the Civil War. Apparently there is a plan to rehabilitate them and construct a museum that would relate the history of the area and the Civil War, although I'm not sure how reliable that information was because it said it was planned for 2006 and we visited in 2009...

BCN Saturday Adventures 01

number 01 - walden7 and ricardo bofill's taller de arquitectura

On this particular Saturday we set out to explore the Taller de Arquitectura (Architecture Workshop) in Sant Just Desevern, Barcelona - the workshop of Ricardo Bofill and Partners. After a long, sweaty walk through industrial, alien areas and along motorways we finally found the Taller and its entrance, the latter was particularly difficult to find - we had to walk the whole perimiter of the building. Our excitement was soon dampened when we were informed that the visiting days were Thursdays... We were really disappointed and frustrated, but luckily the security guard took pity on us and let us have a little look around. Unfortunately we weren't able to explore the interior spaces... something for the "list of things to do on a Thursday in Barcelona".

The Taller de Arquitectura used to be a cement factory, it was discovered abandoned and in a state of disrepair by Ricardo Bofill in 1973. He converted it into architecture offices, a library, exhibition spaces, projection rooms and beautifully overgrown gardens. And he succeeded in maintaining the feeling that he must have felt on chancing upon this place, that of discovering something secret, abandoned and forgotten...

Towering cement structures, covered in creepers...


Cement silos converted into offices...
Raw concrete structures and pathways that lead to nowhere...


and more silos...

Just down the road and round the corner (impossible to miss) we came across Walden 7 (built 1970-1975, also by Ricardo Bofill). I'd used images of it as precedents whilst working on boring residential projects in a London practice, a bit of excitement during an otherwise very dull time in my life, so suddenly catching glimpses of this huge bee-hive behind the Taller was very very exciting!


The building appears big and imposing, like a fortress, from a distance. On closer inspection large openings appear breaking up its facades and allowing views into the building. The openings expose colourful courtyards and a maze of countless balconies and walkways.

I suspect the project would have benefited from more outdoor space per flat - I didn't get a look inside a flat so I cannot say for sure.


We stood outside and took loads of photos when a young, good-looking Catalan guy came out of Walden 7 and asked if we were architects, obviously he'd seen our type before. We said "yes!" and he invited us in, took us around and up to the top floor - 2 swimming pools and amazing 360° views of Barcelona with the mountains on one side and views all the way down to the sea on the other.


The inner courtyards were beautiful; painted blue with exposed brick and navy blue and yellow tiles with playful details everywhere you turned:


The materials, shapes and colours create beautiful, cool light conditions and together with the ponds at the bottom of the courtyard make for a very fresh space - perfect on a hot day.




and as I mentioned earlier, some great playful details, notice the boobies in the following image:


Our friend said that he'd lived there all his life and loved it, we couldn't really come up with any reasons why he shouldn't and in fact he later caught us searching the notice board for flats to rent.

Uncle Lino's House

Have I ever told you about Uncle Lino?
He’s the brother of my grandfather, Nannu Fons - we used to call him Nannu Doc because he was a doctor - but that’s a whole other story. Today I want to tell you about Uncle Lino, well, actually I really want to tell you about his house. But first a little bit about him.
Uncle Lino is a bishop, most people call him Nuncio Gerada but we’ve always called him Uncle Lino (his real name is Emmanuele, but that just complicates things). He was born on the 18th May 1920. This might not mean anything to you, but to a Catholic Bishop it meant a lot – he shared his date of birth with Pope John Paul II – and never failed to remind us.


My father always said that his grandfather (Uncle Lino’s father) simply lined up his sons and said to them, “you’re going to be a doctor, priest, chemist etc…” as that’s what they did because that’s how things were in those days. So as you might have guessed Uncle Lino is the son who stood under his father’s pointing finger as his father bellowed “PRIEST” on that life-defining day. And so he became a priest. And since diligence, impatience and high desires run thick through all Geradas’ blood, my Uncle Lino went on to become a Bishop and eventually Papal Nuncio (kind of like being the Pope’s Ambassador).

Uncle Lino was Nuncio in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 70s, Pakistan in the 80s and Ireland in the 90s (during his time in Ireland he collected all the Funday Times newspapers for us). I wish I’d appreciated it before he got dementia, but I didn’t, so I don’t know all the stories that you are probably eagerly awaiting. I’m sorry.


For most of my life I have only ever seen Uncle Lino on Christmas Eve. Our whole family would gather at his house every year on that night; my grandfather’s brothers and sisters, their cousins, husbands, wives, children and grandchildren and their boyfriends and fiancés. The whole extended Gerada family at its loudest, standing around Uncle Lino’s house in Zejtun. There would always be copious amounts of alcohol and cold sausage rolls and other party food aplenty. And our parents would all get very drunk and embarrassing. At midnight, with half the family drunk (including Uncle Lino) we would have a mass in the little chapel and some poor male cousin would have to go through the humiliation of being alter boy whilst the rest of us tried to make him laugh. Everybody was either drunk or on a sugar high; the Christmas midnight mass was always very, very entertaining.

How can I possibly describe his house to you? I wish I could take you there with me, ideally both of us eight years old. The whole house like another world, some sort of magical adventure playground that you entered through a typical Maltese front door, its secrets unknown to the rest of the village. You’d expect to find doors to parallel universes and books that uncovered the secrets of life amongst all the strange treasures from far away countries and the videotapes (yes videotapes… the videotapes are amazing, they’re all labelled like the videos in that Korean restaurant on Store Street, except the labels are typed out with a typewriter).


I guess I can tell you now (because now the house is locked and barred and empty) that you didn’t need to ring the doorbell to enter this world, the keys to the locked antiporta were always hidden behind the outer wooden door, which was always left open. All you had to do was step in from the street, reach blindly for the keys behind the huge doors and you were in…


There was a room that one only ever walked through to get somewhere else, nothing in it invited a child (or adult, as I discovered upon growing-up) to stop or sit down. We all knew, without being told, that we shouldn’t - nobody even dared to hide in it during our highly competitive hide and seek games (now this is strange because it would have made the best hiding place of all).
The room was green. Perhaps nothing in it was green but it definitely had a green feeling about it, it was green. You went in through thick, heavy velvet curtains that stopped all light from entering it. It always gave me the sensation of going indoors at noon in the summer, except your eyes never adjusted to the light as they do on such a day, because there simply wasn’t enough in there.


Occasionally you caught a glimpse of an enormous pair of elephant tusks towering above a huge mahogany desk. And once I even saw a wooden bible holder on the desk, upon which sat a replica of the Book of Kells - as far as I know it was handmade, complete with gold leaf capital letters, by some Irish monks for Uncle Lino to mark the end of his being Archbishop of Ireland (I visited Uncle Lino in Ireland when I was eleven, he lived in a huge monastery with an Alsatian called Murphy).


As teenagers we played a new kind of hide and seek, we found that the kitchen was the best place to hide frightened boyfriends. Under the pretence of heating up sausage rolls and mini-quiches we had our own little party, balancing wine glasses on the 70s style furniture and leaning on the ancient well opening, away from our embarrassing family.
Our hiding place was soon found out, when, typically, the mothers and aunts came in for food supplies as soon as we broke the rhythm of trays leaving the kitchen.
The informal backdrop of the kitchen (and perhaps the wine too) suddenly made mingling with mothers and aunts less daunting for the boyfriends, and more acceptable to us. They too found a piece of furniture to lean on and joined in the conversation.
Slowly more family members entered in search of food - for at this point we’d completely forgotten that to keep our cover we should occasionally distribute food - until the dining room was left empty if not for Auntie Maria and Uncle Lino, the two family members who couldn’t get off their chairs unaided. And so that year, when the majority of us were teenagers, in a strange turn of events we all happily mingled in the kitchen (a room which we’d hardly ever been into before) forgetting the sole purpose of being there, whilst Auntie Maria and Uncle Lino fell asleep in their dining chairs, wondering where the sausage rolls were (probably getting burnt in the oven).


The videos covered the walls. There must have been hundreds. And it’s funny because the room was so small and full of antiquities, but every shelf, table, cupboard, surface, even the hole in the wall, was crammed with videos. And every video had been meticulously labeled with a typewriter and little labels, every single one was exactly like the next, God alone knows who did it, surely not Uncle Lino - he was the most impatient person I’d ever met (besides every other member of the family). And where did he get them all from? The selection was so random; Rocky 2 stood next to The Snowman which was in the corner with Pretty Woman, although I’m probably lying because I don’t really remember, all I remember is loads of clean, white labels.


Two huge zebra-skin covered bongos towered above you as you entered the house. I don’t think I have ever felt as old as the day when I entered the house and found that I was taller than the bongos.
They fascinated me. I have no idea why because in retrospect they were quite ugly. But I suppose it wasn’t them, but what they represented that fascinated me. To me they were a clue to what Uncle Lino did when he wasn’t being Uncle Lino – when he was Nuncio Gerada, of which we almost knew nothing. They were a little reminder that he was traveling around the world the rest of the time (when he wasn’t sitting in the dining room with Auntie Maria complaining about how stupid our generation was).


The most exciting moment of our Christmas Eve party was when Uncle Lino handed out presents to all four generations of the family. We all stood in the hallway, eagerly (and apprehensively - because you really never knew what to expect and whether you were going to be capable of holding a straight face) awaiting our name to be called out. Sure enough, every year, Uncle Lino never failed to outdo himself in both randomness and originality. And we loved it.
There was nothing better than being given something completely unexpected - whether you liked the present or not didn’t matter, this was all about excitement - the unpredictable gift.
I guess most of the gifts were little objects that he’d collected over the years, probably presents he’d received from all over the world, things that were slowly breaking his shelves, hiding his walls, closing him in, things he couldn’t get rid of, but perhaps could pass on to his family. But it wasn’t only the exotic qualities of these presents that made them so unique, it was his personal touch. The choice of what to give to whom. It was another clue to this man that we knew so little about, and also perhaps a clue to what he thought of us. A copper money box for Andrea, a book about tortoises for Hannah, an engraved sickle for Pierre, a tea set for Julian…what did they mean?