CIVIC Center taller masriera
-REHABILITATION PROJECT-
Barcelona, Spain
GUEST PROFESSOR: EUGENI BACH
The Masriera Workshop was one of the first buildings in the Ensanche, built in 1882, in the first of the four major regulatory stages. At that time, proposing an isolated building is not usual, although it is not strange either, and even more so if we take into account that the original project by Cerdá did not close the blocks and had a maximum height of ground floor and three. In addition, the Workshop program was peculiar and moved away from the usual collective housing.
The building was commissioned from Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas by the brothers Josep and Francesc Masriera to become their painting, sculpture and goldsmith workshop. The initial project literally consisted of a freestanding neoclassical temple. With 5 columns of Corinthian capitals on the street façade and pilasters on the sides, the temple consisted almost exclusively of a large central workshop space to "glorify" art.
Although at the time it must have been an emblematic building, its isolated situation, without adjoining buildings, gave meaning to the formal type chosen. But the densification of the city, the construction of houses on the adjacent lots, and the fact that these constructions were carried out much later, in another normative period, made the Masriera Workshop an exception. Probably not the only one, although it is one of the few that has survived the passage of time.
