This past first Thursday of November, Casa SEAT breathed conversation and city. And all because in this session of Moments Estel·lars, exceptionally outside of the usual Mondays, the Chief Architect of Barcelona, Maria Buhigas, and the urban planner and architect Daniel Mòdol gave voice to a Barcelona that will be World Capital of Architecture 2026… but which, above all, is and wants to continue being a living city.
Buhigas insisted on it: "Being a capital makes no sense if it doesn't leave a legacy." And that legacy, she said, involves reclaiming "the 95% of ordinary architecture" that surrounds us. That which we inhabit without looking.
Mòdol, consistent with his career, linked reflection and action: "The city must be proactive, not strictly regulatory." And he set tasks: caring for a city where 70% of buildings are more than 70 years old, reviewing 30% of protected housing, looking at urban space without fear of imagining it. Tasks for everyone, in short.
Buhigas, executive by vocation and by trade (also currently), called to go "back to basics," not to get lost "talking about the sex of angels" when what is needed is to make what we already have more habitable. And Mòdol replied with his urban planner's pragmatism, who loves the city as a living organism, warning that the duty of authorities is not only to regulate, but also to imagine, experiment, rehabilitate. To do and to dream, I read in his words.
In short, a session with an air of balance and purpose: because the Barcelona (World Capital of Architecture) of 2026 will only make sense if it serves to draw (via exhibition and from the everyday) that of 2035. Because, as became clear during the conversation, the greatest architecture is that which we live without realizing it.