They are part of the houses, but also of the streets. They were a symbol of status and opening of the medieval city, a decorative display in Modernism, for decades they were inhabited by butane cylinders, they have served to hang, hang palm hearts and banners, and lately, if there were tables and chairs, they betrayed a tourist apartment . With the entire city locked up at home to curb the coronavirus, balconies and terraces have been on the rise, and their value could be measured by the difference between having it or not. Or in the size, which in this case matters. But why are there buildings in Barcelona that have balconies (or terraces) and others do not?
The architects point to a host of factors. It is cheaper to build without balconies. For some it is an aesthetic question. In the modern city, with the neighbors all day away from home and an increasingly hostile public space, they lost value. Many families turned them into storage rooms and covered them up. And they lost commercial value: the promoters stopped making them, the architects perhaps did not know how to make them count, nor did the clients demand them.
The book Balcons of Barcelona (2007, Municipal Institute of Urban Landscape) explains how the balconies proliferated on horseback from the 16th and 17th centuries when “the most distinguished houses” began to expand Gothic windows. Remember how Joan Amades recounted the controversy over the city councilors’ attempt to implement a “tribute to the sun”; explains that in the Eixample a regular and harmonic tone was sought; underlines the ornamental display of Modernism … and cites the disappearance of the balconies during rationalism. But it also accounts for the irruption of the terraces between the 40s and 60s of the 20th century, with examples such as that of Francesc Mitjans, one of the architects who moved the interior galleries to the facades.
The director of the historical archive of the College of Architects, Fernando Marzá, points out that those terraces have their origin in the “hygienism” of the 1920s in France, when tuberculosis led to the construction of buildings with large terraces and swimming pools, to facilitate sunbathing and of water. Le Corbusier or the GATPAC at Casa Bloc also gave them courage. They were linked to health and oriented to the most pleasant spaces, he insists Marzá. The COAC dean, Assumpció Puig, points out that “the 24-hour presence in our homes” during the confinement “has revealed deficiencies in some homes, such as lack of sun, an exit such as a balcony, cross ventilation or accessible roofs.” But he also looks back on the past and points out that “since housing is an economic asset and not one of well-being, the maximum amount of space was given to interior housing, so that balconies and terraces lost value.”
Another great sign of the loss of value was that the inhabitants themselves closed these spaces, he recalls. “The Barcelona of windows coincides with the moment in which the car began to take over the city, it happened to be more time away from home, women joined the labor market, children went to after school… now we have to go back to think about health, because housing is our first refuge ”. The architect Lluís Clotet —one of the authors of the Diagonal Mar building that is literally surrounded by terraces— says that “the balcony is a very improved window and that it gives a lot with little added cost”. “It is a door open to the outside, with a railing to avoid falling”, which may or may not have a cantilever, but which lets light in and bathes the spaces and allows you to look out onto the street.
“The terrace is something else, it must have the space of a room, three by four meters, to be able to eat as a family, protected from the wind, the sun and the neighbors, it is an intermediate space, neither closed nor outside and it is economical to build. ”To explain why so few terraces are made, Clotet points out several causes. The ordinances, “that penalize them, reducing them to a ridiculous size, turning it into a storage room that the user ends up closing”. And the “bank, which fixes the conditions of the mortgages and therefore the surface of the houses”. But also to developers, builders and architects and users. The neighbors, he says, are “the last link: if they are not demanding and have a criterion of comfort, they are defenseless.” From the Arquitectes de Capçalera collective, Josep Bohigas, links the loss of use and value suffered by the balconies to “the aggressiveness of the public space”, especially due to traffic.
“When this aggressiveness has plummeted, the possibilities of using them have radically changed, the balconies of Barcelona are a marvel of gadget to conquer”, he defends. “It is a pity that they have disappeared,” he considers and points out their absence in many buildings in the Vila Olímpica. In short, he believes that the balconies have been the victims of a perfect storm: “An aggressive exterior that you don’t feel like looking out at and the lack of interior space.”
I reject the street
“There was a time when the rejection of the trend-setting architects from the street was spectacular,” says and recalls Coderch’s buildings “with galleries to preserve privacy and defend against external hostility.” Or the building devised by his father, Oriol Bohigas, on the Meridiana in the 60s: “That exterior was hell, the building protects its inhabitants from living on a highway with windows that are oriented to capture maximum light and vision” .
After the coronavirus crisis, thinks who is also the director of Barcelona Regional, “we are obliged to review all the folders and accelerate things that we have filled our mouths saying we would do.” Former Barcelona chief architect Oriol Clos also points to costs and the aesthetics in the loss of openings: “For economic reasons, not making balconies at a certain time was given a lot in modest housing and public housing also fell into this trap,” he regrets and adds that also “not doing them may have formal reasons that they prevail over comfort ”. “The regulations should tend to facilitate the construction of balconies and allow them to be added to buildings,” he says.
The fault was also the air conditioning
Among the culprits of the loss of prominence of the balconies and terraces in Barcelona, the architect Lluís Clotet also cites “the appearance of air conditioning” in the houses. “It has lost, as useless, the ability to know how to see the east, the west, the drafts … to know how to open and close windows, balconies, shutters, shutters, curtains, to know how to understand the house as a sailboat that is necessary know to make the journey as pleasant as possible, “he laments.” Surely [el aire acondicionado] It has also made us lose the desire to enjoy a good dinner al fresco, although the day will come when we will not be able to pay for so much energy, ”he adds.
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