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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.
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