One Problem and Two Solutions

Two major museum institutions of the city have agreed to take you on a journey through time while showing you two completely different responses to a situation of housing shortage. Do you want to discover the cases barates of Bon Pastor and Casa Bloc? Ask at the Museum of History of Barcelona or at the Disseny Hub Barcelona, the two institutions responsible for the visit, scheduled for September 6.

Everything begins between Badalona and Barcelona, at the Molinet footbridge that crosses over the Besòs. Cross the river and the ring road and continue along Carrer de Sant Adrià until Carrer de Barnola, 22, where you will find the museum space of the cases barates, which is part of the Museum of History of Barcelona.

There you will see a block of old housing, of which about ten have been turned into museum spaces. Four show the struggle for housing that took place in the city at different moments. The rest allow us to see how the neighbors for whom those homes were intended actually lived. It is a way of safeguarding local historical memory, an exercise also carried out at Casa Bloc.

Because the second part of the visit will take you, in the same district, to see Casa Bloc, a residential building that proposed a different solution to the same problem as the cases barates: not low, single-family houses, but apartments with all amenities, designed to make life easier for working families.

It was built by architects Josep Lluís Sert, Josep Torres Clavé, and Joan Baptista Subirana, all three members of GATCPAC (Group of Catalan Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture).

The building, commissioned by the Generalitat of Catalonia during the Second Republic, is today one of the most significant examples of rationalist architecture in Barcelona.

If you want to get to know the cases barates of Bon Pastor and Casa Bloc in a single visit, check the website of the DHub or of the Museum of History of Barcelona and make your reservation.