Chromaticism of the Eixample

Today I begin a new collaboration with The New Barcelona Post, on a monthly basis. This means that throughout 2022 I will write, if all goes well, 12 articles on urban issues in Barcelona and the world, aimed at readers curious about urban design and its social consequences. It is very difficult to convince a macroeconomist that the shape of cities matters and has important consequences for people's lives. But with urban planning, as in politics, it is important not to pretend that it doesn't concern us, because it modifies our environment. One can pretend not to be interested, one can abhor it, one can criticize it... but one cannot ignore it, because, like a donkey's, the skin of buildings is not transparent.

And today I will write about facades; windows, balconies, doors, walls, cornices, lintels, tiles... and their chromatic richness. I don't know why the building permits processed lately in Barcelona are mostly for black and white buildings. The appearance of new facades is usually white (off-white, at best) or gray. And the frames of windows, shutters, railings, and blinds are usually black. If one walks through Poblenou ---22@ or through the metropolitan peripheries---, one will notice. The new buildings have large continuous white balconies, alternated with black strips. And why does it catch our attention, why does it offend the eye? Because the historic city is of another color.

The "modernist" buildings of Barcelona that have gone around the world have many colors. Think of the Casa de les Punxes, the Casa Batlló, the Palau de la Música, the Hospital de Sant Pau... These are very complex facades, which look very well composed from afar and also when you get closer. The horizontality or the tribunes and cornices are designed to create a landscape from afar, while the flourishes of the railings and the textures of the stucco are appreciated from a short distance. But modernist buildings are not an exception: the traditional architecture of the Eixample also has chromatic diversity.

In 1986, Joan Casadevall directed the Barcelona Color Plan Project, sponsored by Pinturas Procolor, of the Akzo group, with a cost of 115 million pesetas, comprising various publications and studies. In 1993, the Eixample District, chaired by Antoni Marcet, organized an exhibition called Els colors de l'Eixample, for which a small catalog was published.

The exhibition distinguishes three stylistic periods in the construction of the Eixample: the first runs from 1860 to 1900 and is characterized by regularity and homogeneity; the second period runs from 1888 to 1915 and vertical compositions begin to dominate, as well as the widespread use of ornamentation and color. And the third period, which ends in 1936, gives rise to more classical compositions, large volumes, and greater restraint in the use of colors. Most of the Eixample facades are covered with stucco, a mortar made with aerial lime, sand, and mineral pigments. And the traditional colors are reddish (red iron oxide, red ochre, red ocher, natural sienna, yellow ocher, Montjuïc stone color, chrome and emerald green, blue and violet).

The study of this pamphlet has made me think of two important things for contemporary urban discussions in Barcelona. On the one hand, it is surprising that, despite the abundance of regulations, a guide to help choose the colors of the facades of new buildings in Barcelona has not been reissued with greater precision, with all the implications this also has at an environmental level (black facades are horrible for thermal control in summer). And, secondly, that the superblocks have followed a chromatic catalog that has nothing to do with the traditional materials and finishes of the Eixample. The fluorescent yellow, the black of the asphalt, and the intense and bright colors of the paints do not dialogue with the friezes, railings, stuccos, and sgraffito of the traditional Eixample houses.

The superblocks have followed a chromatic catalog that has nothing to do with the traditional materials and finishes of the Eixample