In 1979 was recognized the autonomy of the Catalan region with the adoption of Estatut d'Autonomia de Catalunya; health, education and sport were recognized as services of Generalidad competence.
In 1980 was founded the Direcció General de l'Esport and since 1981 become operative the Departamant d'Ensenyament y Cultura. Both this institutions promoted the construction of equipments, of which the region was lacking, through the elaboration of technical-sheets useful for the design process.
The words by Josep Lluis Mateo, architect of the generation identified by Bohigas, gives a summary of the issues dealt with.
The political change of the late 1970s was [...] the right time to believe that the age-long breach between culture and local government would be closed so that both sectors could work in harmony. The efforts made in this sense, both by the architects forming part of the government and by those others who, though not part of it, have contributed with their design, began a new era of extraordinary vitality in Catalan architecture. Indeed, when compared with the rest of contemporary architecture in Europe, the present state of Catalan architecture is unique in regard to the amount of output and its wide scope. [...] Our particular contribution in response to this challenge lies in understanding and struggling for architecture as a necessity. \cite{Mateo__1985}
This text, more than referring to the relationship between administration and professionals, point-out another crucial issue: the huge amount of constructed works in a limited temporal span. Eight years after their establishment, the departments themselves were promoting exhibitions that popularize the work conducted during this period. Catalogues of these exhibitions are an essential sources for the research. \cite{AA.VV__1986} \cite{AA.VV__1988} \cite{AA.VV__1988a} \cite{AA.VV__1996}
Between 1980 and 1988 in the Catalan region public institutions had invested in equipment: public administration drawn-up technical-sheets and a generation of young architects was called to give shape and form to the public equipment.
3.2.2 Sports equipment in consolidated city
Sports facilities are part of the public equipment family described above: according to Bohigas's words sports facilities are spot exemplar, drivers of regeneration of urban environments where it is possible to recognize a correspondence between social life and physical structure. These architectures, set up with a network of services, could contribute to implement settlement strategy, that are: reequilibar the urban and social fabric; generar a new urban settlement; regenerar a run-down environment; recuperar an abandoned building; completar i redefinir the urban morphology.
In this way a sports building could become magnificador [12]of the around environment \cite{Paricio__1992}: consolidated city, Ensanche[13], surrounding neighborhoods[14], run-down industrial district. The provision of basic sport-for-all equipment becomes the key theme of a series of urban action that has to consider a high density and lack of services.
The explosive growth of the sixties produced high-density areas with a lack of services and facilities; the interstitial spaces between neighborhoods remained empty and offer high expectations to achieve urban improvement. \cite{AA.VV__1987}
Within that urban strategy, it is possible to identify some issues related to the relationship building-city and shape-structure: re-use of abandoned buildings; insertion in a consolidated context; facing with existing; construction by section; etc.
3.2.3 Sports pavilion - type unit
Within the work of the public administration a dominant theme is the sports pavilion that have to be spread throughout the Catalan region and not just in Barcelona.
The Direcció General de l'Esport has been working during this eight years to minimally cover the entire region of Catalonia, helping to sport's frames, sort them, regulate them and try to place them in many cases at the level of the best sports structures in Europe regarding its functionality, services, pavements, hygiene, comfort, etc.. \cite{Vilaseca__1988}
This ambitious project sets at the basis three principles:
- facilities are at the service of sportsman rather than the spectator, in order to guarantee maximum functionality and comfort
- buildings have maximum performances at the lowest possible cost, which does not mean cost-effective constructive quality, but the actually constructed square meters are minimal in relation to their performance
- do not limit the space to a single sports practice, but design it suitable for as many uses as possible
In order to achieve this, and therefore the construction of hall for the practice of sports, in a high architectural quality at low cost the Direcció General de l’Esport sets a series of datasheets with the minimum requirements that define a "mòduls tipus"[15].
Instead of promoting pre-figured architectural solutions, the administration decides to follow the line of «case by case»[16] by entrusting the Sixties generation with the choice of the architectural solutions.
Even in this case it is possible to recognize some settlements and architectural theme, among which: relationship with the context; relationship external paths-internal distribution; relationship type module-typological experimentation; expressivity of the structural element (capacidad expresiva del hecho estructural); relationship player space-spectator space; etc.
This themes are objects of the interpretative re-drawings that are, for this moment, about the Virrey Ama sports pavilion, built in Barcelona by Manuel Brullet. The file of this re-drawing is part of the annexes.
3.2.4 Integrated equipment: sport and education
When Manuel Brullet[17] in L'Arquitectura Escolar a Catalunya i la seva evolució, \cite{Brullet__1986} making the evolution of architecture for schools, presents the last span, 1977-1986, with the title L'escola com a equipament integrat. This slogan synthesize the way in which school are designed: not only the place of education but as a cultural and social center for the community living in a district. Its spaces have to be intended to offer different services during the all day. For this reason «must be defined clear architectural spaces, allowing use's change and emphasize the unity and complexity of cultural relationships.» \cite{Mackay__1986}
Schools became the core of community in which sport has a double value: for the physical education of students and as a facilities for the practice of sports-for -all.
Since 1981, with the transition of educational competences to the Generalidad de Catalunya, there is a huge experimentation of which the requirement was
to strive to invent solutions, case by case, within a low budgets. The aim was to take advantage, above all, of the creativity of architects to solve each commission in relation with their plot and context, without previous typological solutions. \cite{Montaner__1997}
The perspective of school as an integrated center refer to the relationship architecture-pedagogy that has a long tradition in the Catalan region. \cite{Bohigas__1997} An important antecedent is the work carried out between 1976 and 1936 by Comissió de Cultura[18]. Of this commission is part José Goday, architect of the Grups escolars de Barcelona[3] with great architectural qualities and coherence between typological-figurative choices and new pedagogical methods (examples are Escola Ramon Llull, Milà i Fontanals, Collasso i Gil e l'Escola de Mar). \cite{Ráfols__1959} Just in Escola de Mar Bohigas, in the already mentioned essay La arquitectura deportiva en Cataluña, traces the origins of Catalan sport tradition. The issue of school building, according this line of work, allows us to recognize another time some key-themes: functional integration; relationship building-open air spaces; construction by section; etc.
3.3 CONCLUSION
In synthesis, the themes highlighted by the study of the Catalan context could be called back as:
- development and promotion of a non-competitive practice of sport
- public equipment to rehabilitate part of the city
- architectural experimentation by a generation of architects
- sports equipment in consolidated city
- sports pavilion - type unit
- hall for the practice of several sports
- functional integration of sport and other services
According with this issues, as specified in the introduction, the Catalan case will be compared with the British and central-south American Contexts.
The British case, in relation to what just summarized, seems highly relevant for two aspects:
- in 1958 was established the Albemarle Committee to review the youth service that came at a time of growing concern with the problems of youth and identify sport-for-all as a key-sector on which invest (as in the post-Franco period, the Generalidad invested in the promotion of sport-for-all throughout the construction of sport facilities)
- in Britain the issue of functional integration developed the Multi-sports centres. «They could become one centre of community social life[...] we have noted that several New Towns have ambitious plans for such centres [...] we feel that there is plenty of room for further experimental sports centres in this country.» \cite{AA.VV__1960}
Concerning the central-south American context I will refer to the corpus of architectures, which relevance with the research aim has already been discussed, that are suggestive both for the architectural quality, both for the functional contamination in which sport is integrated.
For this context I didn't yet define the key-issue for the comparison with the other context.
Related to the issue came-out from the study of the Catalan context about functional integration of sports facilities and school buildings, it seems interesting to establish a limited comparison with the Swiss educational buildings.
Starting from the words by Manuel Brullet in which he makes the relationship with this context[19] I assumed to set-up a restricted investigation about the relationship between architectural and figurative elements and pedagogical methods, that had in Swiss a long tradition since the well-known work by Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi[20] to the Fifth International Congress for School Construction and Open-Air education, organised in Zurich Kunstgewerbemuseum in collaboration with the Pro Juventute foundation: a private organization dedicated to youth welfare.
Footnotes
[1] I worked on this issue in the paper The role of leisure and sport facilities in contemporary cities. The case of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, presented at International City Planning and Urban Design Conference, Istanbul, 8/9 April 2016.
[2] Related to the assignment of the 1992 Olympic games, it was being promoted a set of urban fabric renewal initiatives and had successfully developed the urban environment and its public spaces.
[3] The Serviço Social do Comércio is a non-profit private institution, kept by businessmen in the trade of goods, services and tourism. It aimed primarily for the welfare of their employees and family but open to the general community.
[4] I refer to the bibliography annexes to the research programe presented at Milestone 02
[5] Sixte Abadia Naudi is professor at the Universitat Ramon LLull and member of the Grupo de Investigación e Innovación ed Deporte y Sociedad.
[6] The investigation El Espanol y el deporte: datos de una encuesta conduced in 1975 by ICSA-Gallup pointed out a lack of facilities for sports claimed by people as a social need
[7] «Parece evidente, pues, que es preciso mantener los barrios viejos como testimonios y, a la vez, como lugares operativos para la reconstrucción y rehabilitación de la ciudad. Rehabilitar [...]quiere decir reencontrar el equilibrio y la correspondencia entre la vida social y la estructura física.» With this words Oriol Bohigas define the concept of rehabilitar in the text Reconstrucción de Barcelona published in 1985 in which the author describes the urban strategy that determined the drawing up of the 'Barcelona Model' and its successful nomination to host the Olympic Games
[8] «Ja no hi ha en les conurbacions europees una gran vocació expansionista, sinó una voluntat de reconstrucció de la ciutat ja construïda.» Bohigas' words talking to Òscar Tusquets about the Barcelona urban strategy. In Diàlegs a Barcelona. Oriol Bohigas - Òscar Tusquets, Editorial Laia, Barcelona 1986
[9] Oriol Bohigas is architect founder of MBM arquitectes and coucilor responsible for town-planning in Barcelona from 1980-1984
[10] «Actuar-hi [en l'espai públic] amb la doble intenció de fer-ne un equipament de qualitat i convertir-lo en un punt de generació de transformacions espontànies. És evident que quan en un barri degradat o no conformat urbanament hom reconstrueix -o construeix- un espai públic, aquest actua com un spot exemplar, com motor d'una regeneració de l'entorn sota la iniciativa dels propis usuaris». Oriol Bohigas describe the 'regeneration role' given to the public equipment by the public administration. Per una altra urbanitat, in Plans i projectes per a Barcelona. 1981/1982
[11] Councilor for Sports and Olympic Games from 1981 to 1995 for the City of Barcelona
[12] This is the definition given by Ignacio Paricio; architect of the Sixties generation. In 1983 founder with Lluis Clotet of their office. They won the FAD prize (Foment de les Arts Decoratives) in 1988 for the Simón venue at Canovelles and in1989 for the Banco de España at Girona.
[13] based on the Plan of the Eixample development in Barcelona (1859), by Ildefons Cerdà.
[14] among these Sants, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, Gràcia, Sant Andreu that were autonomous municipalities until 1897, the year they are merged with the municipality of Barcelona.
[15] The sheets, still used, are a collection of documents that briefly outline the typological requirements and regulatory aspects established by the Catalan Sports Council for the basic network facilities.
[16] Line defined by E. N. Rogers talking about the problem of building inside a pre-existing environment. In Esperienza dell'architettura, Einaudi, Torino, 1958
[17] Architect of the Sixties generation. architetto della generazione '60. Among his works there is the Virrey Amat sports pavilion built in Barcelona between 1985-1986 and the Escola Ronda Cros, built in Mataró between 1984-1986.
[18] The Comisión de Cultura edited in 1922 the book Les construccions escolars de Barcelona, as a summery of studies, projects and other examples to settle the problem of the dimension and the obsolescence of schools in Barcelona.
[19] «El model organitzatiu és el de l'escola suïsa, producte de síntesis entre l'escola de planta central anglesa i l'escola-corredor alemanya». Manuel Brullet in L'arquitectura escolar a Catalunya i la seva evolució.
[20] Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi (Zurigo 1746, Brugg 1827)