what do you mean by "typical"? there are hundreds of buildings in the Eixample, most of them, new and old, could be typified as "typical" (typical Modernisme, typical functionalism, typical Po-Mo, typical whatever..)

most celebrated housing there is of course that of the Modernisme years, those were the pioneers and established the "typical" structure of a housing project in the Eixample... lots of contemporary architects have adapted the old Cerdà rules to present necessities and have done some interesting stuff... Carles Ferrater has some celebrated blocks, younger guys like Pich & Aguilera have brought "sustainability" in the grid, etc..

1859 ildefons cerda had devised a plan for the city which holds much precedence today. his central aim was to alleviate overpopulation and encourage social equality by using building controls limiting height as well as a garden in every block. although his plan has been altered and ignored many revert back to his rationalist ideas, as they did when designing the 1992 olympic village.

there is a plan in place to recover many of the gardens in the eixample and open them to the public and as for the buildings there is a strict architectural code concerning the first floor proportions and function.

i would agree with Medit, that what your asking for is a little unclear. there are so many buildings and each area has a different characteristics. i worked in the eixample on gran via. it was a residential building but one half of the 3rd floor was converted to the architects office and the other their home.

here is another local catalan architect that does projects in barcelona and surrounding areas... http://www.roldanberengue.com/

oh and.... carlos ferrater is a god.

Probably you know about it already, but the Actar guide to Barcelona is a great source of information and history. Not just the star buildings, there's a lot of material about the background and fabric as well.

yes I should clarify: we have tons of resources about Cerda's plan, history and all that. What we are really looking for are detailed floor plans of buildings that make up a continuous block (NOT separated as in most of the modern examples we have found). Our research is aimed at analyzing the various typological solutions for building within the block, examining the urban fabric as continuous from inside to outside. Thus it is important to have not just floor plans of single buildings but floor plans of the buildings sharing the parti wall as well.

I am guessing our best bet is contacting offices that have done major redevelopment projects concerning an entire block or a series of blocks.


Thanks for your responses so far!

I'm not sure if understand what exactly you're looking for..
the only "unitary" blocks that have been designed by just one firm/architect are those of the Olympic Village in the late 1980's until 1992... but that's just like one building repeated all along the perimeter of the block (Ferrater's three white blocks are the most succesful, including the interior green space of the blocks..)

I don't think in the Old Eixample there's such thing as a whole block with a solution of continuity between the buildings because all have been designed by different architects.. the only common characteristic are the volumetry and the fact that it's almost forbidden by the regulations -though I'm not sure of that- to put horizontal windows on the main facades anywhere in the whole Cerdà grid

I mean, when someone designs a building there (and most of the time it covers the whole longitudinal site, thus having both interior and main facades) that is side by side and sharing a parti wall with any other building there's no obligation to follow any particular architectural concept related to the rest of the block... the fabric of the Eixample is as diverse as many buildings there are, some of them are more "autistic", others try to match some composition concepts of their neighboring buildings... but is pretty much a mosaic of non-related architectures (save for, as I said before, the general volumetry, the vertical windows and issues related to balconies and eaves)

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new restaurant started by an architecture school classmate of mine who ditched architecture school after graduation and has now become a chef. restaurant is a hybrid of vietnam/neworleans/catalan. already got a mention in the travel section of the nytimes!

better yet, he opened the restaurant with one of our architecture school professors as his partner!

oh, and, let me know how it is. i probably won't get to bcn again until my kids are a little older.

(sorry, medit, i know i already emailed you separately.)

Medit, that's exactly what we are trying to study: the diversity of housing in Barcelona. I think I meant to say our best bet to find floor plans would be an architect or has renovated a series of different, yet attached apartments for a developer who owns a whole block. So a block of a single architect's work is only valuable to us if we can get the floor plans of buildings in an adjacent block. Is this more clear? Thank you for your comments by the way, they've been helpful.

oh, and viva Barcelona food!

OK, now for the really important question:

How do you pronounce "Eixample"?

In a recent discussion about housing with Marta Male-Alemany and Jose Pedro Sousa, Marta discussed buildings in the Eixample as having fractal qualities. A "typical" block has a large space in the center (referred to as the manzana?) . Around this space are the buildings. Each building also has its own central space (which I call the damp, dark, hole)which is meant to be for ventilation. "Typically" the wet core surrounds this ventilation shaft, and "typically bedrooms lie on either end of the building, depending on how each floor is broken up. This is very general, as the block can be divided a number of ways, thus changing the layout of the ventilation shafts, wet cores, living spaces, etc...

I always heard it said "lazshampla"