Domènech i Montaner, Urban Planner

The city’s role in the thinking and the work of Lluís Domènech i Montaner, a multifaceted figure involved in many fields of the culture and politics of his time, is evident in this exhibition. The formalization of the city with an architecture that monumentalizes it is at the core of his interests.

And this purpose is expressed both in private housing projects and in the major public buildings of the modern city: hotels, restaurants, concert halls, universities, hospitals, etc. As an interpreter of Cerdà's Eixample, Lluís Domènech seeks to break its uniformity.

An actor in the reform of old Barcelona, with his project for the future Via Laietana, his urban ideas are positioned in relation to the historical architecture. This exhibition aims to help understand how Lluís Domènech i Montaner's architecture cannot be understood without the context of the city.

The exhibition’s structure follows an itinerary around buildings and urban projects that not only allow us to talk about the architecture that formalizes them, but also about the city that surrounds them and that is defined by this architecture:

- The project for the Provincial Institutions of Education. 1877
- The International Hotel at the Universal Exhibition of 1888 
- The reform of old Barcelona, from 1879 to 1914
- The Palau de la Música. 1905
- The Hospital de Sant Pau, the "other" city. 1901-1905
- Lluís Domènech, director of the Barcelona School of Architecture, 1900-1920

To organise the exhibition, we have used the Domènech i Montaner Collection from the Historical Archive of the Association of Architects of Catalonia, which brings together the bulk of the documentation donated by the architect's family. Other materials can also be found in the Contemporary Archive of Barcelona, the Archive of the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Archive of the School of Architecture of Barcelona.