|
List of credits
Cerdà. The Barcelona Extension (Eixample)
Exhibition produced by Departament of Territorial
Policy and Public Works of the Government of Catalonia
Translation: Mary Fons
Revision: Bernard Miller
In English
Editorial: Institut d'Estudis Territorials
(Barcelona), 2001
Pages: 40
 up
Cover back
CERDÀ THE URBANIST, the firs module
of the exhibition, enables us to asses the current relevance of Cerdà's
work and his rightful place of pre-eminence in the history of urbanism.
It includes a biography, Cerdà's background, his theories, and
a comparison with other urbanists.
CERDÀ'S PROJECTS, presents housing models, a holistic proposal
for a complete, integrated city, the railway in the city and the development
of Cerdà's proposals.
Barcelona was both the object of Cerdà's analysis and the testing
ground for the theories he developed to meet the needs of the new induestrial
city.
THE BARCELONA EXTENSION, analyzes Cerdà's urban planning instruments,
the Barcelona Extension's phases of growth and a model urban fabric.
The Extension (Eixample) is an urban area of the highest quality, which
epitomises the practical application of Cerdà's theories.
up
Index
Introduction.......................................................................................................1
Ildefons Cerdà and the Barcelona Extension Project........................................2
Testimonies.......................................................................................................3
Three holistic proposals for a complete, new, integrated city............................5
Cerdà's magic: housing begets a city..............................................................10
Ildefons Cerdà's proposal for railway urbanisation.........................................13
Ildefons Cerà's theory of urban viality and the reform of Madrid's
viality........15
Cerdà's place among urbanists.......................................................................17
The birth of Barcelona Extension (Eixample)...................................................20
Cerdà's involvement in the building of the Eixample.......................................24
Ildefons Cerdà, the man..................................................................................28
Notes on Cerdà's theory.................................................................................31
Rereading Cerdà to plan today's cities............................................................33
The value of Cerdà's Eixample today...............................................................37
Service Infrastructures in Cerdà's Urban Planning........................................189
Francesc Magrinyà
Bibliography.....................................................................................................40
up
Introduction
After appearing in Catalan, Spanish,
Portuguese and French, this Magazine is now being published in English.
The aim is to help disseminate worldwide the ideas and work of Ildefons
Cerdà. These are not only of great historical interest but, above all,
as the articles bear out, also absolutely relevant to our lives in the
21st century.
I am happy and proud to pursue the, work of
my predecessors for two reasons: first, we are publicizing the work of
a Catalan urban planner of universal merit, and second, we are also helping
to improve urban settlements, as the past 150 years of exponential population
growth have hardly been distinguished by good decisions concerning city
growth and land use.
The
travelling exhibition "Ildefons Cerdà. The visionary urban planner"
and the anthology Cerdà. The Five Bases of the General Theory of Urbanization,
edited by Arturo Soria y Puig, are intended to be Catalonia's contribution
to more rational land use and to the improvement of urban systems, within
which half of humankind is already living today.
Pere Macias
Minister of Territorial Policy and Public Works of the Government
of Catalonia
Barcelona, September 2001
up
Ildefons Cerdà and the Barcelona Extension
(Eixample) project
Freedom for the individual privacy for the family, fresh
air, sunlight and natural lighting for every home, equality of standards
and service provision for every neighbourhood, and flow management as
a crucial component of regional planning —these were just some of the
holistic objectives of the complete, integrated city.
As Cerdà was to predict with daring foresight, the "new civilization",
forged by harnessing steam power, would come to be characterized by mobility
and communicativeness. These ideas, which shaped the 1859 Project for
the Extension of Barcelona, were the very building blocks of Cerdà's 1863
General Theory of Urbanization. This plan and the theory were the two
most outstanding achievements of Ildefons Cerdà, the civil engineer who
devoted his whole life to the ideas and the practice of urbanism.
The unearthing of several key items of Cerdà's theoretical work, many
of which had languished unknown for decades in archives across Spain,
led to the mounting of the retrospective exhibition Mostra Cerdà. Urbs
i Territori, which premiered in Barcelona from September 1994 to February
1995. Its purpose? To tell the world about a man who has been called the
pioneer of modern urbanism, and its chief theoretician.
In the city of Barcelona for a century and half, his ideas have stood
the test of time. Far beyond any undoubted historical interest in Cerdà's
work, the real driving force behind recasting the exhibition as a travelling
exhibit, lldefons Cerdá. The visionary urban planner, is the need to demonstrate
in a variety of cities across the world. the current relevance and validity
of Cerdà's ideas to the serious and growing problems facing urban, rural
and metropolitan areas. His Extension Project, which was effectively a
plan for a new city, made it possible for Cerdà’s Barcelona to achieve
and maintain —even today— an outstanding urban quality. The success of
the 1992 Summer Olympics helped to spread growing recognition of this
fact.
Shocking as it may seem that arguably the most important theoretician
an practitioner in the history of urbanism could have fallen into oblivion,
there are other historical precedents. The greatest tribute we can play
to Ildefons Cerdà, a progressive thinker fired by the burning conviction
that simple ideas can be the catalyst for great solutions, will be to
revive interest, publicise his work and use it to help prevent disasters
in an increasingly urbanised world.
Albert Serratosa
Commissioner of the Exhibition
up
|
List of credits