Before we learn to walk, to reason, or even to put things into words, architecture has already begun making decisions about how we inhabit the world. It does so quietly, almost imperceptibly, from the very moment a person is born: in the layout of the hospital room, in the light coming through the window, but also in the layout of a home or the route imposed by a particular street. Each of these spaces is the result of a series of small architectural decisions that shape, often without our realising it, how we live in them, relate to them and experience them.
Architecture, then, accompanies us through an entire life, from the first space we inhabit to the last. And precisely because it is so present and so everyday, it easily goes unnoticed. "Architecture runs through us throughout our whole life," said Pol Casellas, architect and presenter of Sota la pell de la ciutat — the betevé programme that looks at various Barcelona facilities and spaces to uncover features, stories and curiosities that often remain hidden in plain sight — speaking at a new session of the Moments Estel·lars series.
It does so, Casellas notes, much like medicine or law — disciplines that almost everyone eventually comes into contact with. The difference is that the same isn't always true of architects: while it's common to visit a doctor or consult a lawyer, architecture can accompany an entire life without any direct contact with whoever designed it. Its presence in everyday life is, therefore, more subtle. And yet it is there from the very first moment: in a hospital, for instance, in the way routes, rooms or even materials are organised to make an environment that might otherwise feel cold, feel more welcoming. It then continues to unfold through homes, streets, buildings and transport; spaces so much a part of the everyday landscape that we often stop noticing the decisions that made them possible.
How to explain the architectural decisions hidden behind every façade, square or building and, above all, how to help the public look at this discipline, understand it and value it, was the focus of the latest session of Moments Estel·lars, organised by The New Barcelona Post at Casa CUPRA Raval in collaboration with Must Media Group, Barcelona Global and, this time, betevé too. Alongside Casellas, the session also featured Ana María Álvarez, communications director of the association 48H Open House Barcelona; Maria Buhigas, chief architect of Barcelona City Council; and Oriol Marin, architect and building surveyor, partner at AQUIDOS, associate professor at the UPC's EPSEB, and a member of the professional board of CATEB (the Barcelona College of Technical Architecture).
The challenge, moreover, carries even more weight in a year when Barcelona holds the title of World Capital of Architecture. But what does that title actually mean for those who live in the city day to day? Beyond the iconic buildings that appear on postcards and tourist routes, what does the public really know about the architecture around them? What do they understand when they look at a building, a street or a square? And how can everything that isn't visible at first glance be explained without falling into demanding technical jargon?
When architecture speaks its own language
The first gap between architecture and the public opens up even before anyone sets foot inside a building: in the words used to explain it. Maria Buhigas, chief architect of Barcelona City Council, acknowledges that architects use "professional jargon full of technicalities that can be hard to decode from the outside." Sketches, plans and models are all part of this language. Buhigas admits she favours these over renders, since their abstraction lets the imagination run free, whereas renders present everything as already resolved — to the point, she says, that "everyone is young, good-looking, rich, educated and happy." Even so, this language isn't always easy to read for those unfamiliar with it. Plans, for instance, can become a genuine maze for a first-time viewer: four lines meeting at a single point might be obvious to whoever drew them, but incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't know the code.
But this language of models and technicalities about building systems, materials and architectural elements has a second layer on top of it: the discipline's artistic and creative dimension. As Casellas recalled, architecture competitions often see projects presented with titles, mottos and original concepts that can sound evocative, but don't always help people understand what's actually behind them.
The challenge is that architects still have to find a way to talk to society. That translation, though, doesn't "have to mean simplifying to the point of emptying out the content," as Ana María Álvarez, communications director of the 48H Open House Barcelona association, has argued. Quite the opposite: it's about opening a door to knowledge and curiosity. Once you know what you're looking at, you see it from a different perspective and, as a result, value it differently too. And that is precisely the task the 48H Open House Barcelona festival takes on each year, opening the doors evry autumn to buildings not normally open to the public, with guided tours that offer a fresh perspective.
Because, sometimes, seeing things differently only takes someone pointing out what had been in front of our eyes all along. It's the same thing that happens, as Oriol Marin — architect and building surveyor, partner at AQUIDOS and associate professor at the UPC's EPSEB — illustrated with a tasting menu: a dish can seem simply good until someone explains its texture, identifies an ingredient or names a note that had gone unnoticed. Suddenly, the experience changes.
Behind every decision is a reason
The goal, however, isn't "to turn everyone into an architect, but to give them tools to see things differently," Álvarez stressed. The idea, then, isn't for visitors to leave able to design a building — seven in ten 48H Open House visitors have no professional connection to architecture — but for them to notice what used to pass them by. For a question to arise in front of a space that once went unnoticed: why is it like this? Why this material and not another? Why this layout? Why does it open onto the street this way?
Because behind every choice lies a decision, and behind every decision, a reason. Casellas insists on exactly this point: architecture isn't just what we see, but also everything behind the decisions that have shaped a space. These decisions aren't neutral: they shape how we move, how we perceive a place and, in many cases, even how we feel in it. In a hospital, for example, more light, warmer materials or higher ceilings can help create a sense of wellbeing in a space that might otherwise feel cold.
"Architecture can be read as 'the reflection of a society at a given moment': its history, its political and economic situation, its culture and ways of life all end up inscribed in the spaces we build"
But architecture doesn't actually end the moment an architect finishes a project, either. Buhigas describes architectural spaces as "living stage sets": architects create a space, but it's people who occupy it, use it and, often, transform it. And it's precisely for this reason that architecture can also be read as "the reflection of a society at a given moment": its history, its political and economic situation, its culture and ways of life all end up inscribed in the spaces we build, and, as a result, priorities, needs and ways of living keep transforming too.
From Gaudí to a bar bathroom: learning to read architecture
And if it's hard enough to see the decisions behind the spaces we inhabit, it's even harder to grasp the ones behind an architecture so familiar it has simply become part of the everyday landscape. Álvarez illustrates this with Gaudí: while visitors from all over the world arrive in Barcelona eager to discover his buildings, many Barcelonians walk past them without ever having set foot inside, holding on to a single, mythologised image of the modernist architect.
But this architectural way of looking can also be applied to spaces we'd hardly identify as architecture at all. Marin takes it somewhere much smaller and more everyday still: a bar bathroom. How the tiles are laid, how a corner is resolved, how a joint is defined; these, too, come down to architectural decisions. Someone chose a material, worked out a pattern and decided how that space should be handled. And these decisions, however subtle, can reveal a great deal about how much, or how little, thought went into a place.
Casa CUPRA Raval itself, where the Moments Estel·lars session took place, is a good example of how an apparently simple building can hide a set of small architectural decisions not always obvious at first glance. Attendees got to discover them on an exceptional guided tour led by Pol Casellas. These are details that also explain the space's transformation: from a closed-off building typical of a bank (Deutsche Bank occupied the property in its previous life) to a point of connection between CUPRA and the city. The renovation, carried out by Carlos Ferrater and OAB (Office of Architecture in Barcelona), makes this visible above all through the new curved glass façade, which opens the building onto Passeig de Gràcia and the Diagonal.
Inside, the building also incorporates several nods to Barcelona and the world of motoring: the hexagonal parquet flooring on the second floor (normally off-limits, as it's CUPRA's working space), which echoes the panot paving of Passeig de Gràcia; the exposed sheet-metal ducting; the mechanisms of the escalators; and the large fans that evoke a car's propellers.
And beneath the city, another city
Because, as with Casa CUPRA Raval, understanding architecture often also means paying attention to details or looking for what isn't visible. And that means looking beneath our feet, too, under the city's dust, to delve into the layers of time that have built up and that also explain how Barcelona became the city it is today. To that end, the session also served to introduce Jaciment Barcelona, a new betevé docuseries directed and presented by Francis Manzano which, from 13 October and every Tuesday at 9.30pm, will explore active archaeological digs across the city to reconstruct its past.
Because behind a façade, in a tile, on a corner or beneath our feet, Barcelona is full of archaeological decisions that explain how the city has been built up over time. All it takes is stopping, discovering them, and learning to read them.