city in space - locations


Cottet Opticos
Furest
Ancora y Delfín
Colegio de Arquitectos
Adagio
Serra
Luis
Remy
La Favorita
Iberia (Plaça Espanya)
Iberia (c/ Diputatión)
Gas Station Campsa
Donna
Fuster




Shopping is a deeply modern strategy of conquest. It has been pursued with success in large cities for over 150 years. The urban battle zone, divided up according to shopping streets and shopping arcades, gets systematically unfurled, and shops get taken one by one. Tips are distinctions that are passed on in a circumspect manner. Actually buying something isn't necessary at all - just gazing into opulent shop windows and weird stores is usually fulfilling enough as it is. The best places that seduce the gaze, therefore, are those with assortments that do not trigger an intense and time-consuming urge to buy. One such is an establishment opened in 1950, the orthopaedic shop Serra on the c/ Muntaner 55. A perfect presentation of every kind of device that supports, binds or corrects, demonstrating the frailty of the human body behind glass with utter precision. Or the Adagio musical instrument store, which presents grand pianos in a 70s- style setting, discreetly integrated into a landscape of lime-green carpeting combined with a Rococo mirror. Lamps reminiscent of a snail's feelers glow all over the place. Collectors looking for details betraying a design intention will have a field day here. Also at the Cottet spectacle store, built in 1976, with its optical frame- shaped door handle ushering visitors inside. Or get lost in a book at the Ancora y Delfin bookstore, designed in 1956 by the German painter Erwin Bechtold. The classically modern, clearly laid out interior contains a fine assortment of books that can help in the planning of further campaigns of conquest in the city.