During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Esplugues de Llobregat and Sant Just Desvern went from being small agricultural towns to becoming important industrial enclaves. Thanks to their proximity to Barcelona and easy access to natural resources and trade routes, factories began to proliferate. Their presence attracted a growing working-class population and fostered the rise of a bourgeoisie that began to build large residences, which would become the symbol of Catalan society’s desire for modernisation.
In this melting pot of urban landscapes, we can identify a symbiotic relationship between industry and modernism, which feed off each other, both economically and aesthetically. The Pujol i Bausis ceramics factory produced most of the ceramics that would later be used by Gaudí, Puig i Cadafalch and Marcel·lí Coquillat i Llofriu in many nearby residences such as Torre Canigó and Casa Pere Pruna. Furthermore, these same bourgeois families, enriched by the new industry and driven by a spirit of progress, did not hesitate to invest in the modernisation of their old agricultural properties, transforming their farmhouses and towers and committing themselves to cultural and aesthetic advancement, as was the case at Can Ginestar.
In a later generation, inheriting this industrial and cultural boom and sharing the same desire for modernisation, Esplugues and Sant Just found their most innovative interpreters in Ricardo Bofill and Xavier Corberó. Bofill, moving from the industrial to the domestic sphere, combines brutalism and modernism in a radical reinterpretation of the industrial function in La Fábrica, and manages to fuse a powerful vision of industrialised domestic manufacturing in the Walden 7 housing complex.
Xavier Corberó, for his part, in his house-workshop, moves from the domestic to the industrial dimension, starting from the union of many small dwellings and integrating art and functionality. He also illustrates how architecture and art can act as agents of joint change and testimonies of a new era of transformation and growth.
It is these towns, which were born as places of decompression from the big city, that grow from the past into the future and serve as harmonious mirrors of what is happening in the centre of the metropolis. They capture their fervour as a reflection of a bustling past, a kind of ‘world of ideas’ so Platonic that, from fusion, it builds its own unique identity. It is worth taking a leisurely visit to discover them step by step.
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