Embracing Life 生命之恩

[taitsze]

ESTADI OLIMPIC de MONTJUIC
For the 1992 summer Olympic Games in Spain


The steel and glass Palau Sant Jordi indoor stadium, by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

[taitsze]

Montjuic Telecommunications Tower 1989-92
By Santiago Calatrava

The tower was to be placed on the slopes of Montjuic Hill, in Barcelona overlooking the main group of sports facilities.


Calatrava designed a 136m high tower, leaning gently from a three point foundation, with the tower’s feet resting on a brick drum, a requirement of the competition.


A circular shell of white concrete supports the heel of the tower, which is covered by broken tiles, a regional traditional technique that was a quiet homage to Gaudi.

[taitsze]

The tower creates a sense of scale, relating to the vast Olympic complex to the intimate pedestrian experience.


The tower structure offered a spatial reference point to a rather dispersed plan for the complex’s facilities.


Its leaning silhouette and circular segment containing the array of antennas with a needle suspended in the center is drawn by analogy from a human figure holding a rod- an obvious allusion to the Olympic torch.

[taitsze]

The coincidence of the tower’s angle with the angle of the sun at solstice- is intended to give the tower and site greater cosmic significance.


However, the tower’s real impact is in the potential movement implied by the contrapposto profile and in its regenerative message.

[taitsze]

FUNDACIO JOAN MIRO
In addition to Miro’s works in various media, the modern building by Josep Lluis Sert is of architectural interest.


Joan Miro (1893-1983) studied at the fine art school at La Llotja. From 1919, he spent much of his time in Paris. Though opposed to Franco, he returned to Spain in 1940 and from then on lived mainly in Mallorca, where he died.


An admirer of primitive Catalan art and Gaudi’s Modernisms, Miro always remained a Catalan painter but developed a Surrealistic style, with vivid colours and fantastical forms suggesting dream-like situations.


In 1975, after the return of democracy to Spain, his friend, the architect Josep Lluis Sert, designed the stark, white building to house a permanent collection of paintings, sculptures and tapestries lit by natural light.

[taitsze]

Museu d’Art Contemporani (MACBA)
By American architect Richard Meier

This dramatic, glass-fronted building was designed with its light, airy galleries act as the city’s contemporary art mecca.


Located in the area of the Casa de la Caritat, a former monastic enclave, the Museum of Contemporary Art creates a dialogue between the quarter’s historic urban fabric and the contemporary art within.


The labyrinthine nature of the site’s existing paths and routes is reflected in the building’s organization, most notably in the main entry, which is paralleled by a pedestrian passageway between the museum’s rear garden, and a newly created plaza in front of the Museum, to be known as the Placa dels Angels.


The gentle fold of this circulation path emphasizes the centrifugal movement of the cylindrical lobby and describes a fifth façade, connecting the geometries of the Museum to an urban context characterized by skewed intersections and the domes of ancient churches.

[taitsze]

Overlooking the Placa dels Angels, the Museum’s south facade displays a diversity of form appropriate to its rich context. The main entry is framed by an overhanging screen of planar elements and rectilinear windows, appearing to slide past a recessed terrace in the Museum’s facade.


Linked visually to this clearly defined entry by a transparent, horizontally articulated glass screen, the Museum’s semi-detached sculpture gallery is enclosed within a billowing, curvilinear shell, a lyrical “monitor” wing resonating with the contemporary spirit of the Museum’s collection and the expressive forms of the enclave’s older character.


The main entry is raised one meter above the plaza and is reached via a ramp running parallel to the façade. Once past this portico, visitors enter a cylindrical reception area overlooking the paseo, a circle interweaving the squares of the Museum’s geometry with the rectilinear blocks of the city.


From the entry lobby, visitors ascend a ramp vertically unfolded within a triple-height hall. Extensively glazed and affording broad views of the Placa, this transparent volume serves to orient the visitor, mediating between the Museum’s most public façade and the more closed volumes of the galleries.

[taitsze]

Parc Guell
Designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, the Parc Guell is Antoni Gaudi's most colourful creation. He was commissioned in the 1890s by Count Eusebi Guell to design a garden city on 20 hectares of the family estate. Little of the grand design for decorative public buildings and 60 houses among landscaped garden became reality. What we see today was completed between 1910 and 1914, and the park opened in 1922.

[taitsze]

Most atmospheric is the Room of a Hundred Columns, a cavernous covered hall of 84 crooked pillars, which is brightened by glass and ceramic mosaics. Above it, reached by a flight of steps flanked by ceramic animals, is the Gran Placa Circular, an open space with a snaking balcony of coloured mosaics, said to have the longest bench in the world. It was excuted by Josep Jujol, one of Gaudi's collaborators.

[taitsze]

Two pavilions at the entry are by Gaudi, but the Casa Museu Gaudi, a gingerbread-style house where Gaudi lived from 1906-26, was built by Francesc Berenguer. It contains drawings and furniture by Gaudi.