Gracia. One of the above photos shows the facade of a former shoe shop. Thankfully, most of the building regulations are respected, and antique architecture is saved. But some buildings in Gracia (and all over the city) look more like favalas than part of a european capital.
The infrastructure is an extreme hotpot
of crumbling ruins, dusty former industrial revolution factories, high tech
telecommunications, space age materials, cutting edge design, refurbished
antiques and aluminium siding. The water, for example, is usually brownish
and tastes unpleasant. The water company, D'Aiguas, claims to send clean
water from their purification centers, so we can only suspect that the lead
pipes and other great ideas from the past have not been replaced. We pulled
out about 10 meters of led pipe when we did renovations in our flat, located
in Gracia. In the picture above, we see how one resident copes with infrastructure
problems: home grown pot.
Since the space available in the district is very limited, architects have
creatively stacked buildings on top of each other for years. Some buildings
remind me of Atelier
Bow-Wow’s Pet Architecture theory from Tokyo where
tiny, misshapen buildings tuck into every nook and cranny of the landscape
in order to maximise space. One of the biggest problems of modernistic solutions
in architecture and city planning is that it assumes large spaces to realise
its idealistic projects. Barcelona is framed by the sea and the mountains,
and has historically chosen to increase density rather than expand much into
other valleys. This creates jumbled architecture that is difficult to control.
(A “barbarian city” wrote Le Corbusier, is one without an overall
order.) “We must rebuild our city centers” said Le Corbusier.
But Gracia is full to bursting with vivid historical detail; etched flower
motifs cover facades, geometric tiles ring balconies, scraps of graphic design
from the past 10 decades pop out of cracked street corners. People of all
ages stroll around tree framed plazas with two wheel carts full to bursting
with peaches, apples, strawberries, tomatoes and flowers in the same way
as they did a century ago. With a good lookout from a rooftop, or from a
corner cafe near a plaza, you can gaze longingly into the stylised forest
that is Gracia. Tear it down? Le C. proposed a plan to save 5% of the important
historical details of Paris and set them like great museum pieces amidst
parks. (In the next section on "El Raval" and "Ciutat Vella" we shall see
that that is nearly what Barcelona's town planners have done.)
The worst street in Gracia is Travesera de Gracia, a choked, skinny, nearly
lawless artery that cuts through the belly of the neighborhood. It is totally
inadequate for the flood of traffic that pours through everyday.
Often filled bumper to bumper for hours with stinking, loud, honking cars,
taxis and delivery trucks, the situation is compounded by the extremely thin
sidewalks on each side of this one lane former horse lane. I have seen pedestrians
get hit by car mirrors that hang a few inches each side onto the sidewalk.
Mopeds, too
impatient to wait in line with the cars, zoom up onto the tiny sidewalk,
pushing pedestrians back up into shop doorways. Scowling old ladies pushing
carts full of groceries know they have to fight to pass through this street,
so they have made an art out of blocking everyone else’s passage.The
only time the street is peaceful is once a year when they close it off to
automobiles for a street fair. The air clears up, you can hear a few startled
birds instead of screeches and rumbles, and you can stroll carefree down
the center of the street. Originally built to human scale anyway, the streets
of Gracia should be blocked off to all automobile traffic. It is the only
way to preserve business and the architectural character of the district.
Cars can pass easily a few blocks above on the new highway through Plaza
Lesseps.
Some buildings have been torn down to make room for better planning and healthier structures, but mostly this former hillside village retains its anachronistic atmostphere, for better or for worse.
