Abstract
“Few people outside the profession would recognize Albert Viaplana as the author of some of the major references of contemporary Barcelona, but his trajectory [ … ] has left a strong mark on the Catalonian city, not only because of its unavoidable calling for renewal, but also because of its particular approach to public space that makes no concessions to capital, and neither to popular tastes.” (2014, 163:6) This note, published in issue 163 of the magazine “Arquitectura Viva”, is one of the many obituaries published in May 2014, due to the decease of the architect Albert Viaplana. Certainly, an insistent renewing and innovative will can be highlighted from his architecture. An innovation distinguished by the proposition of new project strategies characterized for a strong conceptualization and abstraction, emerged as a break from previous things, first through a series of competitions in the late seventies, and later, during the eighties and nineties, through a series of interventions in public space focused on strategic points of the city of Barcelona. The thesis states that, behind this conceptual and abstract appearance clearly recognized, there is a complementary dimension of craft that has not yet been dealt with thoroughly and that is precísely what this dissertation will highlight. In one hand, the document will express and illustrate the technical mastery and precision acquired in the apprenticeship period of the architect under the guidance and guardianship of Moragas i Gallissà (with whom he worked for eight years while he studied architecture). On the other hand. the text will analyse the iconic areas of the city of Barcelona that gave Viaplana the ideal framework for research and investigation of new languages and new architectural strategies. Under both perspectives we will be able to reconstruct the processes of a character that moves between the craft and the art, in a permanent duality, searching for the most substantive thing, looking for what allow him to advance and progress in architecture.
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