Exposició 'Un segle breu: Col·lecció MACBA
Art as a reflection of history

Eric Hobsbawm, the British Marxist historian, coined the expression “a brief century” to refer to the period between the First World War (1914) and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991...

Un home resa en un oratori islàmic © Eva Parey
Coexistence, yes; mosque…, no?

The opening of an Islamic prayer hall in Carrer del Japó, in the Prosperitat neighbourhood, has been fraught with tension because of the residents’ opposition to this centre. Management...

Fotograma del film 'Human Flow' del director Ai Weiwei
View from the heights

It is always possible for anyone, even a "great" artist to address others or represent them visually without viewing them "from on high". This is not the case in Human Flow, the...

SHANGHAI, CHINA
Open cityFlexible Urbanisms

Much of the urban design applied around the world follows the technocratic model of the Athens Charter. This is a homogenous, one-size-fits-all model that provides simple solutions to...

Cover from the book El cel no és per a tothom by Marta Rojals
Rojals’ most ambitious novel

Marta Rojals has taken on the challenge in the American style, using the raw materials of our own local reality. It’s what we might call the “great Catalan novel”. 

Cover of the book Diumenges a Barcelona by Xavier Theros
A stroll through Can Fanga

Writing about Barcelona is a way of recuperating it. This form of resistance has inspired a great deal of literature, be they collections of oral stories, memories or articles on...

Open cityThe (global) city’s not for me

The large global metropolis embodies the spirit of our era, while small and medium-sized deindustrialized cities are sceptical about the future, with nostalgia for a past they identify...

An elderly couple sitting on a bench looking at a pond
Open city‘Ligatios’ and ‘obligatios’: ties in an open city

The space we inhabit, the environment that surrounds us, shapes our behaviour and everything about us: our character, our ethos. That’s what ethics is about. It isn’t just about...

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