Casa Bloc

Casa Bloc is a residential building built between 1932 and 1936 located at 101 Passeig de Torras i Bages, in the Sant Andreu district of the city of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain).

[1] Today, the Casa Bloc is considered a symbol of the rationalist architecture in Barcelona promoted by the Catalan Government during the Second Spanish Republic, since it was once an innovative social project, integrated in the urban environment and housing functional accommodation designed as minimum standard for workers.

Structurally, the finished building was at odds with the aims of the GATCPAC architects: the communal spaces on the ground floor were completed in other ways, part of the original system of vertical access and corridors was discarded, and the primary purpose of the project and its social and cultural function was lost.

The GATCPAC members had sought to embody key elements of the group's thinking in the Casa Bloc, with a program designed to provide decent housing at low cost while suggesting new forms of social living and collective identity, formalized in a new urbanism based on a new concept of the city.

This creative freedom, closely aligned with the tenets of the European avant-garde of the time, and reflecting a significant social commitment, was swept away in Francoist Spain, and was not recognized and recovered until the restoration of democracy.

[4][5] The museumizing of Room 1/11 of the Casa Bloc, now recognized as a unique example of socially committed rationalist architecture in Catalonia, has been an intense and exciting project, the completion of which allows to experience at first hand the interior of one of the apartments just as its creators intended.

[6] For two years, INCASÒL and DHUB have worked together on this project, initially on the architectural rehabilitation and subsequently on the conceptual, documentary and museologicalaspects, in order to restore Room 1/11 to its original structure and appearance.

This has involved fitting out a period kitchen, bathroom, laundry area and shower, laying original cement tiles and replacing the folding doors in the dining room, all from other apartments in the Casa Bloc.