Placa De Espanya and Barcelona Pavilion

For my Easter break I decided to try to see everything in Barcelona that I had not seen yet. I went to Placa De Espanya because I had walked by it once and I have seen pictures of the fountains that line both sides of the street leading up to Monjuic. It reminded me a little bit of the National Mall in D.C. with the towers marking the entrance and a long narrow area leading up to a massive building on the hill. Like the Mall is has museums and exposition areas lining it. Unfortunately the fountains were not on so I will have to see that on another day.

As we walked up the street Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina we found our destination, the Barcelona Pavilion. I was very disappointed with it. In history class it always looks so nice and I really expected it to be a beautiful building surrounded by others like it but it was actually pretty pathetic. I think the design and the building are very well done using planes and columns to create space without actually separating them, but the context it sits in is awful.

All the pictures I had seen never put it in context and that is usually the case with great looking buildings. The space in front of the pavilion is in disrepair. The grass is dead and patchy and the pool is dirty. It is not the urban space I was expecting. It was a disappointment. The area in front really detracts from the Pavilion and creates an ugly space adjacent to a cool procession of space leading up the mountain past the fountains and cascades. The picture at the bottom (flickr.com) shows the dead area in front.