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The operation, for 9.5 million, will be paid with the fund promoted by ERC with which El Molino and the Gimnàs Social de Sant Pau have already been acquired
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The building will host the ICUB and IMED during the next term, which will free up space in the Virreina and will allow the Francesc Macià school to be expanded
The Barcelona City Council has announced this Tuesday the acquisition of the former headquarters of Editorial Gustavo Gili, in Carrer de Roselló, space in which the new Center for Culture and Education of the city will be located, which will be the municipal reference facility for the city. The consistory has agreed with the Gili family a payment of 9.5 million euros for the headquarters, which in a few years, in the next term, will host the Institute of Culture (ICUB) and the Municipal Institute of Education (IMEB), thus freeing up space in its current locations, the Virreina Palace and the Plaza de Espanya.
The acquisition It will be completed in about 15 days and it is done at the request of ERC, which promoted the budget agreement with the government of Barcelona en Comú and the PSC that allowed the creation of a fund of 30 million with which El Molino and the Sant Pau social gym were acquired, in this case with the collaboration of businessman Jaume Roures de por half.
Rationalist architecture
The headquarters, protected as a Cultural Asset of Local Interest and in the process of becoming a Cultural Asset of National Interest, dates from 1960 (he won the FAD prize in 1961) and is the work of Joaquim Gili, nephew of the publisher’s founder, and Francesc Basso. The property is inside one of the few blocks that kept the format that the father of the Eixample, Ildefons Cerdà, wanted for them: open on one side. It is one of the features that has stood out the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Jordi Martí, who, accompanied by the councilor of the Eixample, Pau González, has submitted the operation.
Martí stressed that the building, which has 6,800 square meters of surface, it is one of the three key elements of rationalist architecture in Barcelona and its immediate surroundings, along with the Meridiana Canodromo, which Barcelona bought years ago, and the Casa Gomis, on the Ricarda estate (on everyone’s lips due to the crisis of the non-expansion of the airport), in El Prat, both works by Antonio Bonet Castellana.
Martí has explained that the forecast is to dedicate the year and a half of the remaining mandate to propose the reform project, and that this will take place in the next mandate, that is, after 2023. Once the remodeling is completed, the ICUB and the IMEB will move to the new municipal headquarters., which will coexist with cultural programming spaces open to the public that can be activated immediately, already in this mandate. The idea is that the site is visited by the public.
The transfer of the cultural and educational institute will allow the Virreina to expand the Image Center as well as convert the old Escola Massana into the new library of Ciutat Vella. In the Plaza de Espanya, the transfer of the IMEB will result in the expansion of the Francesc Macià School.
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Gratitude to the family
Martí thanked the Gili family for their “good disposition & rdquor; to the agreement. Two great-grandchildren of the founder, Gabriel and Gustau Gilio, attended the event. The latter has declared: “We have been fortunate to enjoy the building for many years. And buildings deserve to have a life of their own & rdquor ;.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com