Museum Can Framis in Barcelona

My article on Jordi Badia´s Museum Can Framis in the District 22@ of Barcelona appeared in the January - February isssue of architektur.aktuell.

In the Rough
architektur.aktuell 358 - 359, 2010-01-02, January - February 2010, pages 76 - 89.
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The building offers a curious variation on Barcelona's preoccupation with urban form, as it preserves, as if in amber, a vestige of the city's highly unplanned industrial past, set incongruously in the heart of its biggest new planning area, the District 22@, where it is surrounded by large new commercial projects by the likes of David Chipperfield, Dominique Perrault, Enric Ruiz-Geli, Carlos Ferrater and others.

Photo © Pedro Pegenaute

Toledo Meets its River

The Madrid studio of Francisco Burgos and Ginés Garrido has won a competition to rehabilitate the banks of the Tajo River and connect the area to the historic city. The project includes a riverfront walk, pedestrian bridges and a cable tramway that will descend 50 meters from the city to the riverbank. The firm was one of six finalists in a n international competition. Source: El País, February 4, 2010 (in Spanish).

The project is part of a larger urban plan by Barcelona planner Joan Busquets. Other elements include the outdoor mechanical stairs by Elías Torres and José .Antonio Martínez Lapeña, inaugurated about ten years ago, and a Congress Center on the northern slopes of the city by Rafael Moneo, which is currently under construction. All three projects involve operations designed to ease access between the original fortified acropolis of the city and its surroundings.

Burgos and Garrido also lead the team that has redesigned the banks of Madrid's Manzanares River. The new riverside park, partially opened this year, replaces a highway that the city buried in a pharaonic engineering project in 2007.

Photo: Mikel Ortega, Creative Commons License, May 2007 (detail)