Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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Join us for an in-depth discussion from October 10, 2024, of the innovative Urban Project for Barcelona conceived by Ildefonso Cerdá in the mid-19th century, a vision which has today become a significant urban reality.

During his talk Calvet will explore and interpret how certain forms of urban organization, initiated over 150 years ago, have produced a solid and adaptable city, and how this now highly-valued urbanity aligns with current sustainable planning models of consisting of a compact and adaptable city.

In addition to providing a brief overview of the social and economic dimensions of the era in which Cerdá worked, Calvet will also explain the unique aspects of the original design by Cerdá and will compare it with earlier urban projects that applied this type of regular geometric layout.

Calvet will emphasize two aspects that characterize the current reality of Cerdá’s urban design and its enormous capacity for adaptation. First, Calvet will discuss the morphological basis of the 113-meter square blocks with corners cut at 45°—one of the largest block plans developed during the 19th century within a European city. Next, Calvet will elaborate on the elements that constitute the functional structure of the city and how the public space layout conceived by Cerdá—primarily composed of a grid of 20-meter-wide streets with a pattern of 133 x 133 meters between axes and some distinctive 50-meter-wide avenues—has offered great potential for the introduction of new forms of mobility and services.

Current issues and challenges, including the frequently debated value of the “superblock” planning model, and the city’s flexibility to adapt new forms of architecture and transit, will constitute the closing topics of the presentation.

About Luis Calvet

Luis Calvet graduated from the Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona (Polytechnic University) in 1976. From 1977 and 1979 he obtained a Master's degree in Advanced Studies in Environmental Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and in 1993, he obtained his Doctorate in Architecture from the Technical School of Architecture of Barcelona.

Calvet has had an extensive academic career, including serving as a professor in the Department of Urbanism at the School of Architecture of Barcelona from 1980 to 2001.

He has also undertaken leadership roles in the urban development of Barcelona, including his service as Director of Projects in the Urban Planning Coordination of the Barcelona City Council from 1987 to 1992, during the city's transformation process and the preparation for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. And between 2004 and 2010, he acted as Director of the Urban Planning Area of the Rubí City Council, located in the second periphery of Barcelona.

In recent years he has worked in Lima, Peru, where he has taught at university schools of architecture and served as a consultant to Ministry of Housing and the Metropolitan Planning Institute for the project of the new Urban Planning Law and the Metropolitan Plan of Lima. He has been recognized with numerous awards.