| Table of contents |
|
2 Achievements 3 Approach 4 Controversy 5 Major works |
Biography
He originally trained as a civil engineer. When the Spanish government of the time finally gave in to public pressure and allowed Barcelona's city walls to be torn down, he realized the need to plan the city's expansion so that the new extension would become an efficient and livable place, unlike the congested, epidemic-prone old town within the walls. When he failed to find suitable reference works, he undertook the task of writing one from scratch while designing what he called the 'Ensanche', borrowing a few technological ideas from his contemporaries to create a unique, thoroughly modern integrated concept that was carefully considered rather than whimsically designed.
He continued to create projects and improve existing designs throughout his lifetime, as well as to develop his theories taking on larger planning scopes (at regional planning level), until the very end. In the process, he lost all his family's inheritance and he died a heavily indebted near-pauper, never having been paid for his chief masterpiece, the design of the Barcelona 'Eixample'.
Achievements
He was a multi-faceted man who, in pursuit of his vision, gave up a steady job in the civil engineering service; stood for election and became a member of the 'Cortes' (i.e. member of Parliament); drafted useful ground-breaking legislation; drew up an incredibly detailed topographical survey map of Barcelona's surrounding area; and wrote a theoretical treatise to support each of his major planning projects. He actually coined a number of important words in Spanish, including 'urbanización'.
Approach
He focused on key needs: chiefly, the need for sunlight, natural lighting and ventilation in homes (he was heavily influenced by the sanitarian movement), the need for greenery in people's surroundings, the need for effective waste disposal including good sewerage, and the need for seamless movement of people, goods, energy, and information.
His designs belie a network-oriented approach far ahead of his time. His street layout and grid design were optimized to accommodate pedestrians, carriages, horse-drawn trams, urban railway lines (as yet unheard-of), gas supply and large-capacity sewers to prevent frequent floods, without neglecting public and private gardens and other key amenities. The latest technical innovations were incorporated in his designs if they could further the cause of better integration, but he also came up with remarkable new concepts of his own, including a logical system of land readjustment that was essential to the success of his project, and produced a thorough statistical analysis of working-class conditions at the time, which he undertook in order to demonstrate the ills of congestion.
Political developments in Spain and Catalonia eventually led to the enshrinement of a revisionist version of how Cerdà secured official approval of his plan.
Cerdà actually drew up his plan under the commission of the then-competent authority, the Spanish central government, with the support of the city council. A political reversal led to a change in local government, and the new council sought to pre-empt the previous central government's decision by holding a project competition in 1959; nevertheless, Cerdà's design prevailed, much to the chagrin of the major property owners. Controversy
His plan for Barcelona underwent two major revisions; the second version, approved by the Spanish government at the time, is the one still recognizable in the layout of today's 'Eixample', though the low height of buildings and the gardens within every single city block were soon dispensed with by politicians inclined to cave in to (or perhaps even indulge in) speculation.