Francisco Juan Barba Corsini was born in Tarragona in 1916, into a wealthy family with a strong tradition in the technical professions. His grandfather was a prominent civil engineer, whose legacy still lives on in the city: the central market square is named for him. His father, Alfons Bonaventura Carles Maria Barba Miracle, was an architect and managed construction projects. Although he left behind some significant modernist works, he spent much of his career in the public sphere, as the municipal architect of Valls and Amposta. Despite the family’s connection with the province of Tarragona, they lived in Barcelona for long periods.

Barba Corsini earned his architectural degree in 1943 from the Barcelona School of Architecture, where he had begun his studies in 1932. With no known political affiliation, he experienced firsthand the repression inflicted on his family during the Spanish Civil War: his father was arrested during the first year of the conflict. This apparently unjustified harassment led him to flee Barcelona, cross the Pyrenees, and re-enter the peninsula via Irún, where he enlisted in the engineering corps in Franco’s army. Before the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-captain.

This interruption had a profound effect on his education, which can be divided into two clearly differentiated stages. During his early years as a student, under the reformist climate of the Second Republic, he began to incorporate the influences of European rationalism. Later, he completed his studies in an academic context dominated by a rigid classicism, which left its mark on his early designs. However, his frequent trips abroad refocused his attention on modern trends in international architecture, from the Scandinavian rationalism of Alvar Aalto to the Japanese metabolism of Kenzo Tange.

In the 1950s, his design activity was intense, both in the residential sphere and in the commercial and industrial sectors. However, it was his multi-family residential buildings that defined his career, with iconic works such as the Mitre building in Barcelona and the Can Mercader neighbourhood in Badalona. He worked as an independent professional from the office he set up in his family home on Via Laietana, a task he combined with the position of municipal architect of Amposta, a role his father had held some years earlier.

One of his most well-known projects is the transformation of the attic spaces of Antoni Gaudí’s La Pedrera building in 1953 – since demolished – for which he designed 13 studio apartments with a refined, functional, and thoroughly modern architectural language. Some have suggested that this intervention was influenced by his friendship with an executive from the American film company Warner Bros, with whom he watched The Fountainhead. In theory, that experience introduced him to the aesthetic universe of 1950s American design, later called Mid-Century Modern. The furniture designed specifically for this renovation – including the iconic H lamp and its reinterpretation of the BKF chair – are evidence of his desire to combine industrial design and architecture into a coherent synthesis.

Although his built work was relatively limited compared to that of other architects of his generation, his influence was notable. He maintained a critical stance towards speculative architecture and firmly defended the figure of the architect as an intellectual committed to improving the urban environment. Although he was not an active member of the most prominent architectural circles, in his later years he was rediscovered by new generations of architects and designers, who appreciated his pioneering role in the modernization of Catalan design.

He died in Barcelona in 2008. Part of his work and personal documents are preserved in the Historical Archive of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia, and some of his designs have been republished by contemporary firms, which has helped highlight his contribution to modern design.

Biography by Roger Subirà

Bibliografia

• AA VV, Francisco J. Barba Corsini. Arquitectura: función y emoción, lecciones/documentos de arquitectura 12, T6, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, 2006.
• RUIZ MILLET, Joaquim, Barba Corsini, Arquitectura Architecture 1953-1994, Galeria H2O, Barcelona, 2002.
• MONTEYS, Xavier, FUERTES, Pere, Mitre F.J. Barba Corsini, Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, Barcelona, 1998.