Olympic Village Urban Plan

Description

The urban project of the Olympic Village represents like no other the transforming impulse that the 1992 Olympics meant for the city. The Plan extends the grid of the Cerdá plan to the sea, creating a new residential neighbourhood next to Poblenou and connecting the city with the sea. The old industrial area known as Icaria was demolished to make way for an urban area designed to encourage the mix of uses typical of the Mediterranean city and the elimination of urban barriers. The plan is committed to the recovery of the Community Couryard as a building type following the model of Berlage's Amsterdam. It combines the module of Barcelona's Ensanche with a type of almost closed macro-block that allows for the incorporation of different types of housing. The plan, whose concrete projects were entrusted to the best Catalan architects of the time, despite being controversial in some respects (especially in that it was not able to link up with the area's historic industrial past and its working-class population), expresses the desire of architecture and urban planning in the Barcelona of the Olympic Games to create a vibrant, avant-garde city for its citizens.