city in space - locations


Edificio d'Habitages
Edificio Muntaner
Edificio Mariá Cubi
Edificio Via Augusta
Chamber of Commerce
Atalaya




Looking inside from outside, and vice versa. What windows only allow the glance to do, foyers allow the whole body to do. A semi-public zone, an airlock between inside and outside that makes the transition something one can physically sense. Foyers are the stages for grand performances. People who moments ago were mere passers-by in the street are suddenly transformed into customers, hotel guests and visitors. Or occupants who want to be taken from the street to their apartment door. In the three- sectioned residential complex Edifici d'habitatges, built by Antoni de Morages Gallissà and Francisco Riba de Sales in his brutalist phase, foyers are used as architectural elements. Generously-dimensioned, harmoniously designed halls provide access to the apartments on every level: orange and white tiled ceilings, red-shaded lamps sprouting like mushrooms from the rough concrete columns, dark stone floors and brick walls. The foyers extend through every level - subtly echoing the cityscape that visitors were in just a few moments beforehand. The entrance to the Edificio Muntaner and the building on the Via Augusta dissolve spatial borders and extend the cityscape into the building's interior: with glass entrance doors, reflective surfaces, and architectural elements such as benches, ramps, pillars and staircases. In contrast, passers-by in the building on the c/ Marià Cubi enter an intermediate space in the middle of nowhere - they glide through the hall, in a situation very reminiscent of the space station in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 - A Space Odyssey.