The Universitat Internacional de Catalunya's (UIC) ESARQ School of Architecture is promoting a seminar that is to take place at Casa Lleó i Morera, a Catalan Modernist building located on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, on Wednesday and Thursday, 3-4 December 2014. The seminar will provide an in-depth examination of the city’s Catalan Modernist architecture, particularly that of the so-called Mansana de la Discordia, or block of discord, a section of Passeig de Gràcia that boasts three gems of Catalan Art Nouveau: Casa Lleó i Morera (designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner), Casa Batlló (designed by Antoni Gaudí) and Casa Amatller (designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch). These three buildings, each designed by a great architect from the period, comprise a key point of reference for the Catalan Modernist movement.
Under the title, The Block of Discord: Catalan Modernism as a Transgression of the Eixample’s Uniformity, the seminar aims to examine the buildings on this block from a range of different perspectives, taking into account their historical and sociocultural contexts, previous owners, the master craftsmen who built them, their façades, designs, construction, decoration, regulations and more. The objective of the discussion will be to demonstrate that the Catalan Modernist movement used these buildings to transgress the aesthetic and urban-planning uniformity of the Eixample district. The seminar will include seven 30-minute talks by researchers and collaborators from the ESARQ School of Architecture's research group on History, Architecture and Design. The UIC speakers will include ESARQ School of Architecture lecturers Guillem Carabí, M. José Diez, Manuel Arenas and Judith Urbano. They will be joined by Santiago Alcolea, the director of the Amatller Institute Foundation for Hispanic Art; Fátima López, who holds a PhD in Art History; and José Juan Barba from Metalocus magazine, who also lectures at the Universidad de Alcalá’s School of Architecture.
In addition to the talks, seminar participants will have the opportunity to go on a guided tour of Casa Lleó i Morera and find out about the building’s history while examining firsthand the painstaking artistic work of the renowned craftsmen who built it. Stained glass windows, mosaics, sculptures and sgraffiti are just some of the decorative arts that visitors will be able to admire.
In addition to the seminar, Casa Lleó i Morera offers guided and “express” tours of the main floor and inner courtyard for small groups from Monday to Saturday. The tour is available in Catalan, Spanish and English, with other languages available on request, and can be booked at www.casalleomorera.com or at the building’s reception.
