Divergent opinions, if well-argued, always help improve projects. I remember when the jury's verdict for the Glòries square competition came out more than 10 years ago. Many experts reasoned then, not without some justification, that there was a danger that the large green area, in a space of almost 12 blocks, would create an empty space without activity.
Manel Solà-Morales wrote that "instead of an empty space, the Glòries sector could be a fabric full of multiple spaces and buildings, straddling as many infrastructures as necessary. In contact. With the bravest architectures." That reflection led part of the transformation of Glòries to focus on the volumetric studies of the equipment buildings, public and private housing in the surroundings of the square, work articulated by architects Fusas-Viader and Perea and Mansilla.
The temptation could have been to expand the park and create exclusively green areas, but the succession of simultaneous works on the green Canopia and the perimeter constructions has made Glòries a space in constant evolution, including the provisional urbanizations during the works. Now that the large public transport interchange will come into operation, any citizen who walks through it will agree with me that, empty and desolate, this space has certainly not remained.
The anecdote of a subway car with all passengers glued to their mobile phone screens has much deeper implications than we think. The 21st-century city no longer beats to the rhythm of church bells, factory whistles, or train horns. There are no longer collective rhythms; everyone is attentive to their phone notifications. Nor is the concept of citizenship the same: the neighborhood is no longer the framework for relationships for many people, beyond the school period, if they have offspring.
And the way of making a city, logically, transforms following the wake of these changes. A few years ago, when the development of Plaça de les Glòries began to take shape, it was initially thought that the implementation of metropolitan-scale facilities would help create a "new centrality": first came the Teatre Nacional and the Auditori. Then came the Disseny Hub, the Nous Encants, the Agbar Tower, and the Audiovisual Campus, in addition to the Glòries Shopping Center. Not far away are the Vila Casas Foundation and a campus of Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
The train tracks were buried and, in 1992, an elevated ring was built that aimed to undo the impossible knot between the Eixample grid and Barcelona's two great unruly axes, Diagonal and Meridiana. It so happens that the same engineering firm that designed it was in charge of dismantling it, with undeniable precision, twenty years later.
One of the great assets of Plaça de les Glòries is the diversity of uses and sizes of the interventionsIn 2007, theCompromís per Glòries, which pointed to the need to increase the provision of neighborhood equipment, which is already a reality. The Encants school and the Leonor Serrano nursery school stand out; while it has not yet been possible to rethink the slab of the Ciutat de Granada car park, which was supposed to be the basement of the Ona Building, and which has 324 spaces, distributed over 3 floors.Administrative offices, an auditorium, and a multi-purpose center, with capacity for 1,600 workstations, were planned. For now, it is an unfortunate enclosure.
Viewed in perspective, one of the great assets of Les Glòries square is the diversity of uses and measures of the interventions. The flexibility of uses and spaces attracts people who have work routines and do complementary activities when they finish, or people who simply go to enjoy the park or cultural activities.
The square is, thus, a square of unpredictable, but numerous and diverse, connections. Now, in addition, the residents of the protected housing of Illa Glòries ---some for rent, others under a surface right regime--- will coexist with the residents of the Castillejos-Diagonal Towers, with heights between 14 and 15 floors, privately owned.
The regeneration of Glòries square has a dimension comparable to the transformation of Vila Olímpica, the Fòrum, or La Sagrera, and without a doubt, it has been a boost to bring Poblenou closer to Eixample. A good analysis to do, fifteen years after the Compromís per Glòries, would be the economic impact of public investments in works in this environment, and to see if it would make sense to introduce yet another use, on spaces such as the ONA plinth or on the park itself. For now, the massive influx of children is an undeniable indicator.