Boxes and more boxes clutter the office of Open House Barcelona, which overlooks Rambla Catalunya amidst posters, envelopes, brochures, and hard hats. A few days before the 16th edition of 48h Open House kicks off, team members and volunteers rush to finalize the last details. A map of Barcelona with dozens of red dots marked; a whiteboard full of notes; volunteers preparing hundreds of envelopes of material. These are the final preparations for the festival, which next weekend will open nearly 200 buildings usually inaccessible to the general public. "We are a citizen's celebration," summarizes the director of this architecture festival, Elisenda Bonet, from her office.
And it is that venturing into usually closed doors is something that attracts. And if it is about emblematic or unique buildings of the city itself, even more so. And it will not only be possible to do so in Barcelona: a total of seven municipalities participate in this 16th edition. They are Badalona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Joan Despí, Sitges, and Vilassar de Dalt, and together they will open the doors of practically 200 buildings.
Of these, 57 are new this year, and others are recovered after editions of the festival without opening, such as the Fabra i Coats complex. Novelties? Among many others, the recently renovated Edificio Estel, the Palau del Marquès d'Alfarràs in the Laberint d'Horta, the emblematic Torre Diagonal One from the Fòrum, or the Parc Sanitari Pere Virgili, where the unexpected and curious underground tunnels can be seen.
But, apart from the new proposals added to the festival, there is always something new for any citizen: with nearly 200 proposals, it is overwhelming, there will always be something new to see. To facilitate this, the festival has now created a recommender that suggests buildings based on tastes and sensations, and a traffic light code that indicates the level of attendance in each building. It is updated manually: volunteers report the status of queues in a Whatsapp channel, and the Open House team updates an excel that is then transferred to the website. An almost artisanal process done with care and attention to detail, like everything in this urban festival.
— How are the final preparations progressing?
— We are finishing the preliminary visits to the buildings with the volunteers. On Monday we will start delivering the material to them, and we will have training sessions before the weekend. It will be intense. It already is throughout September, because we already call for volunteers, whom we organize according to the buildings. Before that, of course, we have done a capacity study of each building and have established how many guides and how many volunteers we will need in each one.
— Of each of the almost 200?
— Yes, it's quite complex. And then the volunteers are assigned, also taking into account their interests, it's like solving a puzzle. Then, the guides prepare to explain the buildings, although in some, the architects or even the building's owner, or the people who use them, whether residing or working in them, take center stage. It's interesting to see how these properties have life. In the end, architecture is a container for human activities.
— And all this is organized with a team of how many people?
— Permanently, we are between five and six, and the team expands to about 20 people for two months for the festival. In addition, we have about 30 regular volunteers, the proxies, for us.
— If you weren't in charge of all this and went as a visitor to the 48h Open House on the weekend, where would you go?
— How difficult to choose!
— Right? It's very difficult to do it among almost 200 options.
— For a family reason, perhaps I would go to the Cercle del Liceu, to see Oleguer Junyent's stained glass windows, because my mother and her niece were friends. And I could link it with the Convent de la Mercè, which is now the headquarters of the Captaincy General. These martial spaces always command a bit of respect, and I find it interesting to see how a convent was transformed to accommodate a diametrically different use. There is an anecdote that explains that, during the Civil War, a neighbor hid the Mare de Déu de la Mercè under the stairs.
— Buildings tell stories.
— As an architect, I would also want to go to the Enric Miralles Foundation to visit his studio, or to the Monestir de Valldonzella, with its unique cloister with brick arches. And speaking of cloisters, I would also recommend going to Pedralbes. There is much to choose from!
— And of many types, from more classic proposals to the most modern.
— There is a 48h Open House for everyone. We have proposals for every interest. Even for traveling through the transformation of the city, through places like the Casa de la Barceloneta, the last testimony of the original houses of the neighborhood. Or the Parc Sanitari Pere Virgili and its underground corridors; many must remember when it was the military hospital, and it was inaccessible to citizens. And this year we have another novelty, which is that for the first time we approach places of homage to the dead: the Tanatori de la Ronda de Dalt and the crypt of the Convent dels Àngels, which had not been opened to the festival until now. Or Fabra i Coats, which returns to the program, and which we have been seeing in different phases of transformation.
— Reaching 16 editions already allows witnessing the change and evolution in places like this.
— Yes, since we started in 2010, many things have changed.
— How did it all start?
— In London, I went to visit Open House London, which had been running since 1992, promoted by Victoria Thornton to bring architecture and urban design closer to the citizens. Since then, volunteers who participated in the festival and moved outside London promoted the festival in other cities. Barcelona was the first city to join from outside, without this connection of volunteers. We were the eighth city to organize the 48h Open House, and it was then that it was decided to create an umbrella organization for all events, Open House Worldwide. Now, we are 60 cities on five continents.
— From Barcelona, do you have a relationship with these other cities?
— Yes, especially with the European ones. In fact, three years ago Open House Europe was created, with 16 cities. We exchange volunteers, precisely to foster the exchange of ideas, of cultures. In addition, every year we have a meeting in one of the cities. We have already proposed doing it in Barcelona as well.
— In these 16 years, what has 48h Open House become?
— We are a citizen festival; we have what a major festival has. Like neighborhood festivals: you look at the program, you decide what you are going to go to and with whom. We are very happy that Open House has become that, and an opportunity to discover a heritage that is sometimes unknown and undervalued, especially in contemporary architecture.
— What building is missing from the program?
— There is one that we have always pursued and that we have not yet achieved: a building on Passeig de Borbó that belongs to the Navy. At the other extreme, there are other buildings that come looking for us. At 48h Open House, there are always options for everything.