After many years in a precarious state, the Hivernacle de Ciutadella has seen this week how workers and cranes invaded its interior, with the aim of undertaking the deep rehabilitation that its battered walls and broken glass are crying out for. With a budget of two million euros, the works are expected to last for a year and will focus on the three naves that make up the building.
"The city will not lose the Hivernacle, it will stay, it will not fall or be damaged," said Barcelona's Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning, Janet Sanz. The works will serve to restore the heritage building, which still maintains its original use as a greenhouse, and resolve the structural pathologies detected in the failed 2015 renovation, which stopped shortly after starting when the company in charge of carrying it out filed for bankruptcy. The building will also be equipped with a ventilation system and humidifiers.
With the rehabilitation already underway, it remains to be defined what will be done in this building, which depends on Parcs i Jardins. "We are already thinking about what the proposal for uses we want for the interior will be in order to commission the project, which will not only make preservation and maintenance possible, but will also allow the enjoyment of this historic building of the city," Sanz said, without specifying whether the greenhouse function will be maintained.
The Hivernacle de la Ciutadella, cataloged as a National Cultural Interest Asset, has an area of 1,000 square meters. Designed by Josep Amargós i Samaranch, it is made up of three longitudinal naves, the central one, which is the tallest, and the two lateral ones, the Picasso nave and the Magnolias nave. Built for the Universal Exhibition of 1888, it was used as a ballroom and conference hall during this great international event. The plants and trees that have historically inhabited its interior have seen it occupied by an exhibition hall, a jazz series and multiple cultural events, as well as a shop and a restaurant, which closed in 2006.
For the City Council, the rehabilitation of the Hivernacle, which joins that of the Martorell Museum, is key to consolidating Ciutadella Park as a strategic space in the city, after seeing how most of its icons, including the Castell dels Tres Dragons and the Umbracle, have deteriorated. The city wants to boost the park, a green lung of more than 14 hectares, and all the institutions surrounding it, such as the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Hospital del Mar or the Zoo, with a new scientific and cultural centrality through the Ciutadella del Coneixement initiative. This project will begin to be visualized in a new research complex that the UPF, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) will build in the space previously occupied by the Old Central Fish Market, next to the Ciutadella – Vila Olímpica metro stop.