Design Museum of Barcelona

Disseny Hub Barcelona

Established	2008
Location	Barcelona
Website	http://www.dhub-bcn.cat/

Disseny Hub Barcelona (Catalan naming, English: "Design Hub Barcelona"), abbreviated as DHUB, is a new center of Barcelona's Institute of Culture, who works to promote better understanding and good use of the design world, acting as a museum, and laboratory. It focuses on 4 bracnhes or design disciplines: space design, product design, information design and fashion.

Disseny Hub Barcelona is located in two temporary locations: DHUB (Carrer de Montcada, 12) and DHUB Museums, in Palau de Pedralbes (Avinguda Diagonal, 686). DHUB houses all temporary activities and the study galleries, as well as a reference centre. DHUB Museus hosts the permanent exhibition of the Museu de les Arts Decoratives entitled From the one-off object to product design and the permanent exhibition of the Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària Dressing the body. It also hosts the Gabinet de les Arts Gràfiques collection, which is open for specialists in the field to consult. The opening of the permanent headquarters, to be located on Plaça de les Glòries, is set for May 2014.

History

Barcelona is a city historically linked to design, with old institutions such as the Foment de les Arts Decoratives. That is why the city of Barcelona was raised earlier in the decade of 2000 to create a single center, an integral space to allow the public to understand design in a broader consideration. It was decided to build a single space in which locate all collections and endowments existing in Barcelona related to the world of design, and Oriol Bohigas commissioned the construction of a building in the Plaça de les Glòries. It was originally going to be called Barcelona Design Museum. Currently (February 2012) the building is still under construction, with an estimated cost of about 88 million euros, but is expected to inaugurate during in 2012.

Goals

The center wants to become a meeting point of a network of people and institutions involved in the design world, and will share relevant information related to the sector. The aim is to encourage both research and economic activity linked to the world of design, using both own equity funds, as of this ongoing analysis of the design world.

Buildings

While ending the final building in the Plaça de les Glòries, temporarily DHUB is divided into 2 areas of the city of Barcelona, the 'DHUB' (Carrer de Moncada, 12) and DHUB Museus in Palau de Pedralbes (Avenida Diagonal, 686).

Glòries

Streetworks related to the Glòries building

The final location of DHUB is scheduled for 2013, will be located in the Plaça de les Glòries. It will consist of a building project designed by MBM architecture firm, formed by Oriol Martorell, Oriol Bohigas and David Mackay. The building is under construction since, in July 2009, the then counsilor of Culture Joan Manuel Tresserras and the mayor Jordi Hereu, laid the first stone.

The building consists of two parts: a ground (using the level change caused by the urbanization of the Glories pl.de) and one that emerges on the level of 14.50 meters. The latter is a parallelepiped bias cut with the same width as the Avila Street, making final indicator of the ratio Eixample-square without closing the view of the large central park. The subway has covered the treatment and use of public space, related, therefore the future project of the Plaza de las Glories. The green carpet is one of the important components and are made with natural or artificial elements to ensure sustainability and easy maintenance.

It is planned to create a bar and restaurant, offering an attractive public space. The lake will act as a compositional emphasis relating the various levels.

Ground Floor

Be located on two floors and a mezzanine, denser activities, such as main exhibition hall, reservations, research and teaching, well-attended services, etc.. Natural lighting and the relationship with the outside, despite being a basement, will be achieved through the pit produced by the difference of levels, reinforced sheet water reflecting a kind of large forecourt. This lighting will be reinforced with six skylights that will emerge in the public and may be used as showcases for the contents and activities of the Centre.

First Floor

According to planning, will occupy the minimum floor area for not reducing the space for public use. Cantilever will extend into the square, allowing the planned building area. The set of the two bodies that make up the center will enter through a single hall with double access: +7 m level., From Avila Street, and at +14.5 m., From the square. This hall is a kind of street or public place, public or semi-almost a must to relate the square of the Glories, the Poblenou and metro and the exchanger may. From this square semi reach all services located in the basement, and a set of stairs, escalators and elevators, all the upper floors of various dimensions and characteristics, forming, however, continues to drive up to the conference room. The exterior of the building uses only two materials: metal plates (zinc or aluminum) and glass, so that, together, have an industrial look with metallic reflections.

Sustainability

The entire project involves a high degree of environmental quality, sustainability and energy sufficiency. It may indicate the most important chapters: sustainability passive (material and structure of massive facades and finestram, storage and processing, pre-engineered systems, shading and insulation, etc., Within the criteria of Distinctive Guarantee environmental quality of the Generalitat and the EU Ecolabel), sanitation (separative network to reuse rainwater), plumbing (minimum consumption control and regulation of flows, solar collectors for hot water production for a minimum of 70%), air conditioning (water chillers for air condensed high performance, low noise and acoustic protection, heat recovery chiller plants, natural gas boilers, free cooling when outdoor conditions permit, latent heat recovery in the extraction of air), electricity (low power, presence detectors, testers timed, photovoltaic panels for direct use of solar power), centralized management of all facilities.

Palau del Marquès de Lió

Interior Patio of the Palace

Main article: Palau del Marquès de Lió

It is one of the palaces of major Gothic façade of the Montcada Street in the Barri de la Ribera of Barcelona. It is located at number 12, just next to the Museu Picasso. The oldest preserved part is a tower and two coffered ceilings dating from the late thirteenth century. On the first floor windows are kept a renaissance. It also features a window that keeps the family crest Codina. On the second floor retains a Gothic fish market. The facade was altered in the sixteenth century, when they opened the windows and replaced the doorway lintel of a door lintel. The courtyard is enabled and in the eighteenth century and has an open staircase, similar to other palaces of the street.

Before joining the family Codina, the palace had passed through the hands of various lineages Catalan, most notably the Segrià, Pontons Coromines and Marimon. Pere Bernat Codina acquired the Joanot of Marimon on 1538, who will retain until the eighteenth century. That's when a marriage with the family lineage Mora, subsequently invested as Marquis de Lyon, gave its name to the Palace.

The building was restored between 1965 and 1969, when he opened the Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària, until the December 2, 2008 opened temporary headquarters DHUB where activities currently taking place and temporary exhibitions. Also DHUBDOC headquarters and offices.

Palau Reial de Pedralbes

Palau Reial de Pedralbes

Main article: Palau Reial de Pedralbes

The palace has its origins in the old Masia ( or farmer's house) de Can Feliu, from the 17th century. The corresponding land was acquired by the count Eusebi Güell, along with the neighbouring Can Cuiàs de la Riera. Together they formed the Finca Güell, an extensive parcel of land (30,000 m²). The Can Feliu building was remodeled by the architect Joan Martorell i Montells, who built a Caribbean-style small palace, together with a Gothic-style chapel and surrounded by magnificent gardens. Later the building remodeling was given to Antoni Gaudí, together with the construction of a surrounding perimeter wall and the side entry pavilions. Gaudí also partially designed the gardens surrounding the palace, placing two fountains and a pergola and planted many Mediterranean plants like palm trees, cypress trees, magnolias, pine trees and eucalyptus. The Font d'Hércules (Hercules fountain) still exists today on site, restored in 1983; it has a bust of Hercules on top of a pillar with Catalonia's shield and a spout in the shape of a Chinese dragon. In the Palau Reial de Pedralbes (Diagonal, 686) are placed the DHUB Museums, and you can visit the permanent exhibitions of Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària and a permanent exhibition of the Museu de les Arts Decoratives which later will be passed to the building of Glòries.

Museums

As a center of centers, the DHUB endowments joins several museums:

Museu de les Arts Decoratives

Main article: Museu de les Arts Decoratives

The Museu de les Arts Decoratives is a museum created in 1932. This historic museum contains a rich and diverse collection of European decorative arts, from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. In 1995, the museum extended its boundaries with the incorporation of design, thus converting it into the first and only statewide museum concerned with the preservation and exhibition of Spanish industrial design. The collections of the Museu de les Arts Decoratives were created from an important resource of industrial design and decorative art objects, that included salvers, carriages, furniture, wallpaper, clocks, tapestries and glasswork.

Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària

Main article: Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària

The Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària possesses countless objects and pieces of major artistic and historical value that make up their collections of garments, fabrics and jewellery. Regarding their collection of clothes, the museum allows you to take a journey through the history of textiles, from the 16th century right up to the modern day. The museum’s collections include Coptic, Hispano-Arab, Gothic and Renaissance fabrics, as well as embroidery, a section on lacework and a collection of prints. Also worth mentioning is the jewelry collection, comprising approximately five hundred pieces that were made and produced in Spain.

Gabinet de les Arts Gràfiques

Main article: Gabinet de les Arts Gràfiques

The Gabinet de les Arts Gràfiques, a Cabinet of Graphic Arts, is a museum dedicated to visual communication design. The collections of the museum bring together significant samples of typography such as punches, matrices and tracing plates, as well as, prints that include samples of binding, packaging, labels and posters.

Important printers such as; Elzeviriana, Bobes, Seix Barral and Tobella, Naips Comas (the makers of playing cards), Tallers Roca (the industrial bookbinders) and the Neufville type foundry, have contributed to the museum’s expanding resources. In addition, certain artists and their families, have also donated graphic works and engraving moulds – as is the case of Miquel Plana and the families of Josep Obiols and Miquel Llovet. The collection is presented during exhibitions and study galleries programmed by Disseny Hub Barcelona. The concept that initiated the The Study Galleries was to create an area that combines the ideas of a temporary exhibition, a documentation centre and a museum repository but that has its own identity. Various objects are assembled according to their typologies and presented in a way that allows visitors to study, contemplate and reflect upon the museums collections.

The Casa Bloc Apartment Museum

Casa Bloc.

Main article: Casa Bloc

The Room 1/11 of the Casa Bloc (1932–1939) (in Catalan, Block house) is an apartment-museum run by the Disseny Hub Barcelona. Inside you can visit the structure and the original look of the floor of this architectural complex, a reference architecture worker housing at the time of the Second Spanish Republic. The opening of this museum floor space as a tribute to the work of Josep Lluís Sert Josep Torres Clavé and Joan Baptista Subirana and innovation that its approach assumed the 30's. The Casa Bloc is open to everyone, with a regime of guided tours by reservation, from March 2012. Room 1/11 is a duplex measuring 60 square meters. It is located in Block 2, Level 1, Gate 11. The internal layout is very simple and clearly differentiates the day and the night.

Permanent exhibitions

From the One-off Object to Product Design

The permanent exhibition of the Museu de les Arts Decoratives presents a chronological itinerary in two parts. The first part demonstrates the evolution of objets d'art from the Romanesque to Romanticism, and with an emphasis on Catalan production, it also shows the birth of product design during the Industrial Revolution in Occidental Europe. The majority of objects in the exhibition were designed for personal use and as such, have been presented in a way that illustrates everyday life and production processes (both artisanal and industrial), from the 19th century onward. At the museum, you will find furniture from wealthy, affluent homes, including wedding chests, beds, chairs and vanities, as well as a variety of common-use objects such as tableware, fans and watches. The second part of the exhibit focuses on the development of product design, with the presentation of 442 pieces that form a representative sample of industrial design in Spain. Conceptually the exhibition follows the journey of a designed product by socially contextualizing it in Barcelona, specifically and more generally throughout Spain.

Dressing the body

Dressing the body proposes a tour of the history of garments, covering five centuries, from 1550 to 2000 – a game of fascinating parallelisms between the morphology of the human body, socio-cultural events and historic styles. Since ancient times, men and women have altered the form and appearance of their body through hairstyles, jewellery, tattoos and, above all, garments. Each period’s way of dressing has to do with moral, social and aesthetic codes.

Fashion imposes ideals of beauty. Silhouettes and volumes are altered – nature gives way to artifice. The exhibition, Dressing the body, depicts the transformations the body has undergone, prompted by changes in clothing involving five different actions, which tend to either confine or liberate it.

Dressing the body has been nominated as one of the116 Touristic Icons of Catalunya, an initiative that identifies the most significant symbols and manifestations that represent the Catalan visual identity. The collection was prepared by the Agència Catalana de Turisme, the Direcció General de Turisme and Artesania Catalunya of CCAM, the Foment de les Arts i el Disseny (FAD), the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) and the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC).

The Royal Chambers

The Palau de Pedralbes and by extension the Royal Chambers which include Alfonso XIII's bedroom, and Victoria Eugenia's waiting room and chamber, were constructed between 1919 and 1924. The architects Eusebi Bona and Francesc de Paula Nebot were commissioned to build this home for the King and his family during their brief and sporadic visits to Barcelona.

Alfons XIII's chamber, and the waiting room and chamber of Victòria Eugènia, were added to the itinerary of the Museu de les Arts Decoratives exhibit after the fall of the monarchy, when the Royal residence first opened its doors in 1932. The public was now able to view the three chambers which had been left in their original conditions in regards to wall murals and furniture, by the former occupants who had been sent into exile.

Despite all of the political changes that the building has passed through, (monarchy, republic, civil war, dictatorship, monarchy) (monarquia, república, guerra civil, dictadura, monarquia) that could have led to changes in the construction of the Palau de Pedralbes, the Royal chambers have been preserved almost completely in their original state. The spaces, decorated by King Alfons XIII and his wife Queen Victòria Eugènia in their own personal styles and using their own financial resources, still carry the stamp of their former occupants.

During the 1920s, the winds of modernity arrived in Barcelona with Mies Van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion at the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. The King visited the exhibit and was honoured with a personal tour by the architect himself. Despite these new influences, the decoration of the Royal chambers, which was harmonious with some very interesting furnishings, was conceived using clear historical parameters under the direction of a conservative aristocrat anchored in the past.

DHUBdoc

DHUBdoc library

DHUBdoc is dedicated to the greater areas in the world of design: product, fashion, information and interior design. The initial bibliographic reserves DHUBdoc contains over 9,000 published documents dating from the 16th century to the present day. And 1,600 of those dating from before 1950. The reserve originated in the old libraries of the Museus Tèxtil i d'Indumentària de Barcelona and the Museu d'Arts Decoratives de Barcelona, the Gabinet de les Arts Gràfiques de Barcelona and the BCD (Barcelona Centre de Disseny). These sources have received numerous donations over the years by professionals, individuals, institutions and businesses. Particularly noteworthy for their uniqueness and excellent state of preservation, the bibliographic reserves of the Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària are made up largely of two very large donations: the bequest of the Comtesa de Vilardaga and the donation by Sr. Manuel Rocamora. The majority of the bibliographic reserves can be found in the reading room and are accessible to the public. DHUBdoc has developed its own classification system: IMAG.

The most valuable documents, the oldest and those that are referred to the least, can be found in a deposit in the DHUB building. DHUBdoc uses RFID technology (Radio Frequency Identification) to keep track of the number of consults each document receives. With this information, the documents that are the most in demand are always located in the reading room for ease of access.

The historic reserves of magazines and journals is still being catalogued. The centre keeps over 100 subscriptions to specialist magazines and journals.

Archives

Entry to DHUBdoc

The archives of the DHUBdoc currently include:

• ADI FAD Archive. Collection of the reserves of the Associació de Dissenyadors Industrials del Foment de les Arts Decoratives (1957–2007) It contents documentation generated by the association in its everyday activities, being of work or management. Includes documentation related to its administration(foundational acts, meetings, members, reports, participation in international entities…), information management (archives, computer system…), external relations (public acts, relations with other private and public institutions…), human resources management, financial resources management, heritage management (movable and real state items), legal issues, promotion of industrial design (exhibitions, conferences, publications…) and services to the members (distribution lists, labour exchange, bulletins…)
• Rigalt i Granell Archive. The Archive is made up of documents collected from the stained-glass workshop Rigalt, Granell & Cia and is a testimony to the work of this centenarian workshop that was in operation from 1890 until 1984. Until now, the documentation from the stained-glass workshop Rigalt, Granell & Cia. was being preserved by the Granell family. The archive consists of diverse information about the artistic and technical aspects of the workshop whose work was central to the modernist period. Their work can be found at the Palau de la Música Catalana, the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau and the Casa Lleó Morera, among others. The company worked with architects including Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Lluís Moncunill, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Geroni Granell. The documentation is a testimony to the work of this centenarian workshop that was in operation from 1890 until 1984. Rigalt, Granell & Cia. faced many challenges throughout this period, which, while it always remained in the hands of the Granell family, included changes to its founding members. In this archive you can find accounting documents, drawings, sketches, inventories, publicity catalogues and photos from the stained-glass workshop. The largest number of documents that have been preserved are 500 sketches that include drawings of stained-glass and acid-etched glass. Thanks to these drawings, we can follow the artistic trends in stained-glass over the last 100 years. Included are drawings from the pre-modernist, modernist, noucentista, art deco, and works that reflect the abstract tendencies of the 80's. The donation comprises a total of 3,000 pieces, including prints (from different countries), diverse themed plates, brochures, business directories (among which include Les Vitraux de Paris (c.1900), Aus der Deutschen Glasmalerei de Berlin (1901) and Religiöse Malerein für Kirchedekoration de Viena (1907), company photographs and folders with original drawings and sketches.
• Montaner y Simón editors collection.

Databases

The DHUBdoc offers its users some of the best specialized databases available. Requests and consultations should be carried out at the centre's facilities.

• Design and Applied Arts Index (DAAI) allows for the consultation of summaries of published articles from design publications dating back to 1973. It covers a wide variety of disciplines: Ceramics, glass, furniture, jewelry, graphic design, fashion design, textile design, interior design, architecture, web design, etc. It includes approximately 1200 new records every month.
• Berg Fashion Library is an online resource that provides integrated access to visual and textual content on clothing and fashion throughout history. It includes the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, a collection of electronic books, dictionaries and other reference resources, as well as, an extensive image bank.
• First VIEW is an extensive archive of fashion photography that allows access to more than 3 million runway images of designers from around the world. DHUBdoc members can access this database from the centre's facilities.

External links

• Disseny Hub Barcelona
• Disseny Hub Barcelona (German)