Antoni de Moragas i Gallissà was born in Barcelona into a cultured, bourgeois family that included various architects. Chief among them was his uncle Antoni Maria Gallissà, a modernist architect who designed several prominent works. His family spent the summer in Argentona, as did Josep Puig i Cadafalch. The two struck up a friendship, which heightened Moragas’s interest in architecture. In 1941, he began his studies at the Barcelona School of Architecture. Through his relationship with Puig i Cadafalch, Moragas absorbed the intellectual spirit and cultural engagement of Noucentisme. As a student he became a member of an association that defended classical culture, a culture that played a central role in the thought and architecture of the period. However, as an aspiring architect, Moragas soon embraced architectural rationalism, eventually becoming a staunch defender of the style.

In the post-war period, the Architects’ Association organized a competition to explore social housing. Moragas won the competition together with Josep María Sostres, Francesc Mitjans, Ramón Tort, Josep Antón Balcells and Antoni Perpiñá with a project that placed more emphasis on political, social and economic aspects than strictly typological ones. The aforementioned architects, joined by Oriol Bohigas, José Antonio Coderch, Manuel Valls, Joaquim Gili and Josep Maria Martorell, founded Grup R.

On most of his designs, Moragas worked in association with Francesc de Riba Salas. His work on multi-family residential buildings was especially prolific, some of which display a strong presence in the city, such as the buildings on Via Augusta or Casa dels Braus on Barcelona’s Gran Via. Moragas also stood out as an interior designer: the lobbies of his residential buildings are highly regarded and have become benchmarks of interior design in Barcelona. He also made forays into industrial design: he was an activist and a pioneer of the concept of design and industrialized production as opposed to handicrafts. Along those lines, he was the founder of ADI-FAD the Industrial Design Association within the FAD (Fostering Arts and Design) and served as its director from the time of its creation in 1968 until his death. His buildings exhibited this interest in industrialization through the use of prefabricated elements made of exposed concrete or with washed concrete finishes. As a result, and because of the tendency to reveal the load-bearing structure as a means of expression in his buildings, his architecture is often described as “brutalist”. In some of his projects, his passion for industrial design is taken to the extreme: designing all the details and decorative elements, such as lamps and railings, or the famous folded sheet metal plates that look like ceramic tiles.

Another characteristic of his work is “organicism”, especially present in the interior design and decorative elements. Moragas was a great connoisseur and supporter of Scandinavian design and architecture, and the influences of Alvar Aalto’s work are obvious in some of his designs: for example, the ground floor and the staircase in the Park Hotel. Through the Architects’ Association Moragas was able to invite many of the architects he admired to Barcelona, along with major personalities from the architectural culture of the time: Alberto Sartoris, Alvar Aalto, Bruno Zevi, Gaston Bardet, Nikolaus Pevsner, Gio Ponti and Alfred Roth, among others. He forged solid friendships with some of them.

Beyond his architecture and his role as a designer, Antoni de Moragas i Gallissà was remarkable for his role in the cultural and associative life of post-war Barcelona and for his commitment to defending the profession. In 1966, he participated in the Assembly of the Democratic Union of Students of the University of Barcelona, which was repressed by the Francoist authorities, a historical event known as the caputxinada. He held various positions on the board of directors of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia, serving as dean for two non-consecutive terms. He was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi ─ the highest honour presented by the Catalan government ─ and received the FAD gold medal. He was a member of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, the Barcelona Board of Museums, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi. He was a member of Club 49 ─ an artistic group with ties to the publishing house Editorial Cobalto and the ADLAN group ─ which included Sixte Illescas, Sebastià Gash and Alexandre Cirici, among others. He served as chairman of Edicions 62 and as president of the El Món communications group, Edigsa, and Omnium Cultural. He was also a regular participant in social gatherings and associations, and he was a lover of opera and a collector of medieval art.

Biography by Roger Subirà

Bibliography

AA VV, Antoni de Moragas i Gallissà. Bloc d’Habitatges amb Francisco Roba de Salas, Coleccions COAC.07, Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2016

ROQUETA, Santiago, Antoni de Moragas i Galissà, Colección Clásicos Españoles del Diseño, Santa&Cole, Barcelona, 2010.

MONTANER, Josep Maria, Antoni de Moragas i Galissà, Publicacions del Centre de Documentació, Actar, Barcelona, 1998.

DE MORAGAS I GALLISSÀ, Antoni, “Els deu anys del Grup R”, en Serra d’Or 11-12 [separata], Barcelona, November-December 1961.