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Línia de la Verneda
(La Verneda Line )
Architects:
Office of Architectural Services, Municipality of Barcelona
            Technical Project Team:
            
María Luisa Aguado, architect
            Alicia Calmell, arquitecta architect
            Iñigo Ugarte, Sònia Dalet, Susana Céspedes,
architecture students
Artists:
Francesc Torres
Location and date of execution: Barcelona, Spain, 1999

The neighborhood of La Verneda is located within what used to be the town of Sant Martí de Provençals, one of the independent municipalities incorporated into Barcelona around a hundred years ago, when the ensanche of the city was undertaken.

   
Click images to enlarge.

At the time, La Verneda was a neighborhood of Sant Martí. It stands at the northeast of Barcelona's current municipal area, the border of which, marked at this point by the Besós River, actually matches that of the neighborhood. Traditionally La Verneda has been a working class quarter and it remains so today.

The Carrer de Guipúscoa at La Verneda, originally one of the high traffic access routes into the city, ceased to be a direct entry way with the construction Barcelona's rim road. The goal of the intervention performed by the team from the Municipality's Office of Architectural Services was to recover that space for pedestrian use, at the same time as new subway stations facilitated communication with the center of the city. In this way, the old rapid transit way became a central walkway over one kilometer in length, retaking for use by the residents of La Verneda a space formerly their own.

In the context of the remodeling work undertaken by the team of Barcelona city architects, the sculptor Francesc Torres conceived the work "Línia de la Verneda," situated at the new boulevard ("rambla") on Guipúscoa street, between the streets Bac de Roda and Extremadura. The sculpture emphasizes the linear quality of the physical environment in which it is located. Stainless steel plates, resin, and reinforcerd concrete have been used as materials to create a segment marked at its extremes by the letters A and B. Fragmented by perpendicular streets, this segment covers the length of the avenue in an angle slightly diagonal to the layout of Guipúscoa street. The formal solution is a 27.5 cm wide sinuous line on the vertical plane, which emerges three-dimensionally from the asphalt at every section of the avenue, rising and falling again as if it at times remained hidden under the pavement.

At bird's eye view, the segment will show an absolutely linear image, while from ground level, in contrast with its geometrical source, the three-dimensional, malleable and organic quality of the piece is very evident. Herein lies the metaphor and narrative strategy of the project; the segment can be understood as a representation of the flow of individual life and /or the collective history of a community. History is written in a linear manner even though it develops in a less rational, less controlled, less predictable and sometimes even in an obscure manner. This underscores the contradiction between historical events and how they are written, between facts and their transformation into History. The same can be said about a person's life or a community's existence throughout time. The segments of "Línea de la Verneda" will be engraved with texts recording in a concise manner historical and mundane events that have taken place at Sant Martí de Provençals throughout its 1000 years of traceable history.