But the worst thing about touristic architecture is how outdated and cringe-worthy it appears today. The buildings reek of having tried too hard to impress and outdo one another. There is moreover no common thread between them other than their effort at being unique and contrasting sharply with tradition. Wherever several works of touristic architecture are clustered closely together, such as at Plaça de les Glories (a former manufacturing district converted into a media district in the 2000s), the result is a hodgepodge; an authentic clusterfuck, an architectural disaster area marketed as the new and modern Barcelona; and tourists eat it up like freeze-dried paella on Las Ramblas. This in a city that only a decade and a half earlier won a RIBA Gold Medal for its Olympic-era urban projects. In the context of today’s climate-emergency, touristic architecture comes across as a big part of the problem, as what largely got us into this mess today. Their structural gymnastics, often involving immense rhetorical cantilevers, consume much more concrete and steel than would otherwise be necessary. The idea of an economy of means, or beauty coming from simplicity, went completely amiss in this period of excess. The only redeeming quality of touristic architecture is serving as examples for how not to design. Barcelona’s successful tourism industry, built largely on an architectural foundation, has come increasingly under fire in recent years. Demonstrations demanding the degrowth of tourism are a regular occurrence, as is anti-tourism graffiti and even the dousing of tourists by watergun-wielding locals. There are now few places left in the city where locals can get away from tourist hordes. Indeed, one of the reasons Barcelonians are themselves travelling out of town more than ever is to escape from their over-touristified city: tourism as an antidote to tourism. Meanwhile, touristic architecture has travelled abroad as well, especially to China and the Gulf states. * In 2020, Fodor’s placed Barcelona on its ‘No List’ for the first time, doing so again in 2023 and 2025. But this has not served to lessen tourist numbers, which continue to grow year after year despite the physical limitation of having Europe’s highest urban density. Indeed, anti-tourism graffiti and demonstrations have themselves become highly sought Instagram backgrounds. Tourism’s ability to capitalise on anti-tourism surely makes it the ultimate form of capitalism. Perhaps this explains why young graduates from the city’s four architecture schools have been eschewing touristic architecture in favour of housing for some time now, resulting today in a wave of innovatively constructed cooperative and social housing projects that centre on livability, not visitability. Hopefully, these fascinating new residential buildings will not be museum-ised for visual enjoyment by tourists any time soon. £
all images Rafael Gómez-Moriana
clockwise from top: Barcelona Convention Centre , Josep Lluis Mateo, 2004 Hotel Vela , Ricardo Bofill, 2009 Santa Caterina Market , EMBT, 2005 Protest march against over-tourism, 2014
RAFAEL GÓMEZ-MORIANA runs the Barcelona term-abroad program for the University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and is a Spain correspondent for The
Architectural Review and Bauwelt. rafagomo.com @rafagomo
9 on site review 46 :: travel
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator