It is not yet ten in the morning and around twenty people are waiting on the corner of Passeig de Gràcia and Consell de Cent, in front of the Casa Lleó Morera, the work of Domènech i Montaner, one of the leading architects of this weekend. A volunteer – there are 800 mobilized throughout Barcelona and six more locations – distributes gomets to identify visitors. The 14th edition of the 48H Open House has just begun, a proposal designed to explain and bring architecture closer to citizens who are not necessarily experts and which serves to open the doors of more than 200 houses and homes, many normally closed to the public.
“Domènech i Montaner hired more than 40 artisans, there are relief and wood details by Gaspar Homar, sculptural elements by Eusebi Arnau...”, explains Laia Vidal, archivist by profession and guide for three years only for the weekend. from Open House. The polychrome stained glass window floods the room with colors, the hydraulic tiles were designed by Domènech i Montaner himself and the mosaics are by Lluís Bru. A gem and one of the ten works by this architect with a Renaissance spirit, whose centenary of his death is celebrated this year, included in this edition of the Open House.
To enter the Casa Lleó Morera it is necessary to register and visitors arrive in stages. There are no tourists. The tourists are a few meters away, in front of the Batlló and Ametller house. Here the vast majority are from Barcelona, like Pere Comeche, a fan of the Open House, who has visited each of the editions and who last year won the photography contest, with an image that played with the Mapfre Tower and the Arts Hotel.
The festival does not discriminate. From modernist architecture to the most current, such as the Passivhaus home in Poblenou. “We promote the fifteen-minute city and our goal is for people to be able to take a tour and three or four visits in the same area, starting with their neighborhood,” explains Elisenda Bonet, the director of a festival that promotes and organizes an association , 48H Open House Barcelona, non-profit. This year, 140 houses and homes can be visited – always free of charge – distributed throughout all the districts. If yesterday the offer was more numerous in Poblenou, the Diagonal axis and the Sants area; Today there are more visits to Ciutat Vella, Montjuïc, Gràcia or Guinardó. “We want to disseminate architecture and what it implies, how it plays with space, with light... We want to explain to citizens those houses that they have passed thousands of times,” she adds.
Yesterday, in line to enter the Castell dels Tres Dragons, there were a handful of nostalgic people. The castle-like building that the festival's leading architect designed as a café-restaurant for the 1888 Barcelona Universal Exhibition was one of the proposals that aroused the most interest. Many had entered the building when it was the Zoology Museum, of which there are still vestiges. Barcelona was the seventh city to join the Open House network, which began in London Victoria Thorton and is currently held in 51 cities around the planet.
