Barcelona Metropolis

The “plaza dura” and the Barcelona model

The “plaza dura” emerged in a historical, political and economic context that should be borne in mind in order to understand the merits it pursued. In 1979, with a newly established democracy, the PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya [Socialists’ Party of Catalonia]), in alliance with the PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya [Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia]), came to power in Barcelona City Council. The 1980s were characterised by a significant shortage of resources, the beginning of the Olympic dream, which ended up coming to fruition in 1992, and a powerful community movement that on many occasions failed to reach an understanding with the City Council. In 1980, the architect Oriol Bohigas joined the Urban Planning Delegation. His decision as to how to regenerate Barcelona entailed a strong commitment to the construction of public spaces limited in size and in multiple neighbourhoods. He got rid of the cars from Plaça Reial, demolished a block in the Raval neighbourhood and gave impetus to squares in the Sants and Gràcia neighbourhoods. Compared to other municipal management models that endorsed a General Plan, such as Madrid, or a focus on investment in paradigmatic streets and in singular features, this urban planning scattered throughout the territory also meant that the budget for each of these squares was limited.

Besides the political and economic conditions, the “plaza dura” is part of a conceptual environment to whose construction Ignasi de Solà-Morales made a unique contribution, in whose writings we better understand the design agenda implicit in this type of solutions. In the chapter “Lugar: permanencia o producción” [Place: Permanence or Production] of his book Diferencias. Topografía de la Arquitectura Contemporánea [Differences. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture], he was opposed to a static and sacred concept of place and replaced it with the ideas of flow, dynamics, set of events and meeting point of energies. Furthermore, Solà-Morales argued that what he called terrain vague – semi-abandoned spaces with no functional definition – were the true essence of the urban, insofar as they provided an anonymous freedom that the citizen could exercise without the capitalist determination of the rest of the city’s spaces, which dictated what to do in each place also as an act of imposition of consumption.

The strong criticism of the so-called Barcelona model, in whose synthesis and structuring Oriol Bohigas played a leading role (he is credited with having had as much decision-making power as Hausmann in Paris or Otto Wagner in Vienna), is also applicable to the “plaza dura”. Josep Maria Montaner underlines the lack of dialogue with community movements, the very limited protection and appreciation for historic heritage (for example, the demolition of four Elies Rogent warehouses, considered the cradle of modernism to open the Ronda Litoral ring road, and Bohigas himself has said on several occasions that the best fate for the Sagrada Familia would be to become a Renfe train stop) and the lack of integration of sustainability criteria. To this list, from a present-day perspective, other criticisms can be added such as the zero integration of a gender perspective or the failure to contribute to a vision of placemaking where there is true observation, attention to and integration of the needs and desires of the users of the spaces.

To delve deeper into the gap between architects and society, the “plaza dura” and the example of the Plaça dels Països Catalans could be case studies of huge value. José Mansilla, urban anthropologist and member of the Observatory for the Anthropology of Urban Conflict (OACU), carried out a study in 2017 within the subject of Introduction to the Sociology and Psychology of Tourism through a brief exercise in participant observation with users. Most of those who took part in the study did not think of the place as a square; the perception was one of an ugly, dirty space, one for passing through and of little use. When asked which elements they would add to the square, they answered that they would add colour, afford it more green areas that would allow passers-by to take a breath; benches and collective rest areas to limit individual facilities that hinder conversation; and, finally, the installation of children’s areas, areas for dogs and an area demarcated exclusively for skaters. In a broader context, the participants called for the easing of traffic by reducing the presence of vehicles in general and connecting the area with the nearby thoroughfare Avinguda de Roma.

In the city, singular elements do not only include squares, corners, monuments or green spaces; they are part of a network that may or may not facilitate the preservation of collective health or the environment. The city’s open spaces, seen from an agenda that advocates urban biodiversity, must be part of a matrix structure in which the “urban patches” become the nodes of a network (Breuste 2008, Wu 2008). The strategy is to generate a network with as many intersections as possible and connect them through proximity and diversity relationships. This calls for a change in the vision of the city: to understand the pattern formed by the different elements beyond the elements themselves. The recent controversy generated in the media about whether the next reform of Madrid’s Puerta del Sol should have trees or not is a good example of the need for a change in the way the city is observed and analysed. The arguments focussed on the need to hold events, on the importance of seeing the complete facades in a historic setting and even, somewhat rightly, blaming the architects for not knowing about landscaping. Among the reasons given, no one thought about the distance to the nearest shaded area, green space or fountain, and whether they formed a dense pattern or if their continuity depended on the Puerta del Sol. The survival, or at least the minimum comfort, of many species in the city, would include, among others, a portion of the human species with determining factors based on age, health or economic availability and biologically depends on the strength of that network.

Heterogeneity is another key aspect in the design of biodiverse urban spaces. Many species need different natural spaces for their survival. The seasons make a major difference in the needs of living things: they may require shade and moisture in summer and, in winter, the opposite. These different needs also affect the animal species throughout the different life stages. If we produce heterogeneous environments, living beings can build, according to their needs, a life path with different periods of use in different environments. In this regard, the strategy that is good for bees, sparrows or squirrels is equally good for humans, who have varying needs according to the season and stage of life.

Heterogeneous solutions versus clean solutions

Those who practise architecture have been educated to homogenise the environment, among other reasons because, from the point of view of the designer, it is a much more “economical” process (I come up with a solution that seems good to me and I repeat it), versus the commitment to heterogeneity (I not only have to think of several solutions, but also deal with the problems that surface when mixing them). Both councillors and architecture professionals have systematically positioned themselves in favour of “cleaner solutions”, as defined by the current mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, as the solution to redevelop the Puerta del Sol, so extremely hard that it proposes a total absence of vegetation. This project was the subject of a competition organised by the Madrid Architects’ Association in 2014, won by Linazasoro & Sánchez Arquitectura.

To defend this type of proposal, arguments such as the need to preserve the historical heritage are used, but we have to remember that the Plaza Mayor in Madrid had, like so many others, trees and fountains until 1927. The choice of the hard-surfaced square should be vehemently contested by citizens because it represents a serious issue for their health and well-being and the survival of living species in the city. Hasn’t Covid-19 taught us anything about the appropriateness of putting the economy ahead of health and the environment? The technical (underground structures) or longstanding arguments can all be questioned or beaten. The only compelling reasons to prioritise the hard-surfaced square are, again, to give precedence to productive activities (cleaning, security, control of public order, advertising, commerce and the organisation of profit-making events) over citizens, the environment and health, an approach that this article invites readers to challenge as erroneous and, if you wish to be more perverse, to understand it as a means to preserve a visual culture of order and cleanliness that allows architects educated in the Modern Movement to differentiate their aesthetic preferences from those of ordinary folk.