The Auditori It does not happen to be one of the most iconic buildings in Raphael Moneo. It is not even the most representative of the first Spanish ‘pritzker’ in Barcelona: the label is held by the Torre Puig, the last construction built to date by the architect; although to be precise the location of the office skyscraper is not exactly in the Catalan capital, but in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. But L’Auditori despite not being one of the most representative buildings of Moneo’s genius, contains an architectural solution that amazes the sector: a singular lantern. “An rotated cube”, according to the architect himself, three stories high that rises right in the center of the construction.
In the Eixample plot
It has the grace that acts as an outdoor lobby of the two rooms of the equipment and the peculiarity that It supposes the continuation of the plot of the Eixample. The cube -apparently weightless because the structure is suspended- allows public passage below, giving continuity to Ausiàs March street: without it, the road would be cut off by the building itself. It is also a wink. There is the 45 degree turn that Moneo gave it so that it would remain aligned like the chamfers that Ildefons Cerdà devised. Architectural value, yes, but also artistic value. The second attraction is given by the murals that Pablo Palazuelo (1915-2007), one of the great representatives of geometric abstraction, reflected on the 1,064 crystals that give shape to the prism.
The thing with Moneo and Palazuelo was a collaboration, come on, that was conceived together from the beginning. It was not the first, but the second. The joint debut of both creators was in the 1970s, in what is considered one of the first important works of the architect: the expansion of the Bankinter headquarters in Madrid. For both cases, Palazuelo created from the geometric lines that defined his work. Red and black for the Paseo de la Castellana building and blue and black for the Barcelona auditorium. He performed eight pieces with the title of ‘Concert’, one for each face of the cube, four exterior and four interior, which were painted directly on the crystals, and which are the the only example of a mural by the artist from Madrid in Barcelona.
Singular and emblematic
All of this defines the lantern at L’Auditori as unique and emblematic, but the space has dragged on another adjective for years: sick. The crystals that form it have been breaking for a long time, almost since its inauguration, in 1999. But do not panic: “It is not a problem of the building’s design, but of the technology of the time”. Speech by Ignacio López and Toni Alonso, members of the study Lagula Architects and responsible for the restoration of the skylight and its murals. The question is forced, why has it taken two decades to fix it? And the answer is the same as always: due to lack of budget. Now the Generalitat and the city council have put the €1,123,000 necessary for its restoration.
36 broken glass
The work is already underway and its completion is scheduled for before the start of the next season, in September, but meeting deadlines and budgets has not been easy. The cost of glass has increased between 20 and 30% in the last year and supply problems have made an appearance. The solution has been found in Girona and it will not go through tempered glass, which was used for its construction and which has been found to have a breakage percentage of between 6 and 7%. The average in L’Auditori has been lower, 36 damaged panes represent only 3.3% of the total, but even so, since it is a public space, laminated glass will be used, an element that if it breaks, keeps the pieces safely attached that they end up on the heads of the people of Barcelona.
Palazuelo’s new original
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The change of crystals implies the restitution of Palazuelo’s work. This means that the original will not be restored, it will disappear, but a new original will be created, how it was done in its day with the mural by Keith Haring that took the pickaxe ahead of the Olympic Games. López and Alonso have the support and advice of the Palazuelo Foundation and a single slogan: that it be the closest thing to what it looked like in 1999. They affirm that it will be, only that it will look different from how it looked lately, not in vain 23 years of pollution in Barcelona had turned the crystals opaque.
At the moment, the only thing that looks are the three murals that decorate the protective walls inspired by the theme of the trilogy of the past, present and future seasons: Creation, Love and hate, and Death or return signed by Eloise Gillow, Mina Hamada and Carla Fuentes.