The activities at the Poblenou Historical Archive during Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture

This year Barcelona has become the international epicenter of the architectural debate with the celebration of Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture, a distinction awarded by UNESCO and the International Union of Architects (UIA). Throughout the year, Barcelona projects itself as a global forum for reflection, exchange, and innovation around architecture, urban planning, and landscaping.

The program of Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture, spread across the city throughout the year, aims to highlight the essential value of architecture and of all the disciplines that shape the physical spaces we inhabit.

The Poblenou Historical Archive brings together a host of activities to celebrate, recover, preserve, and disseminate the memory of the Poblenou neighborhood, especially its industrial, social, and urban past. Currently based in the Torre de les Aigües del Besòs, the Archive offers consultation services, exhibitions, talks, publications, and guided tours linked to the social and economic changes of Poblenou and its relationship with the city.

Here we present the activities taking place this summer. You can check the complete program at this link.

• Twenty-nine chimneys and a tower

Until 12/13 · Tuesday to Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm · Monday and Friday from 5 pm to 7 pm · Saturday from 12 pm to 1:30 pm

The industrial past of Poblenou has left twenty-nine chimneys out of the more than two hundred that once existed. Now, they appear as ornamental elements, detached from their original context and, often, framed by new architectures that have surpassed them in height, giving a new appearance to the urban landscape.

This year, coinciding with Barcelona’s World Capital of Architecture, the Poblenou Historical Archive celebrates fifty years with a project dedicated to tracing the legacies of the industrial past. At the Archive’s headquarters, in the Torre de les Aigües del Besòs, a chapter-by-chapter exhibition is presented, which will change every month, to address aspects related to the stories of the factories, their workers, their architectures, and the neighborhood movements that fought for their preservation. These exhibitions will be accompanied by a public program of presentations and talks around the main themes addressed in them.

A series of artistic interventions will inhabit the Tower itself, opening the door to this emblematic and unknown space from which an unusual perspective of the city can be observed. The project continues until December, with an exhibition at Palo Alto, in collaboration with a group of students from BAU, College of Arts and Design. From the entire project, a time capsule will remain, which will be sent to 2043, when the bicentennial of the origin of Poblenou is celebrated.

• Stitching urbanism, inhabiting architecture

Until 06/30 · Tuesday to Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm · Monday and Friday from 5 pm to 7 pm · Saturday from 12 pm to 1:30 pm

This exhibition speaks of architectures and urban planning that shield and accompany our everyday life, our intimate, personal, family, or social life, with all its joys, doubts, ambitions, fears, commitments, sadness, dreams, or revenges. Thus, our neighborhood appears as a social and cultural fabric made of streets, squares, beaches, facilities, shops, workshops, and bars, sewing experiences and spaces together. Coordinated by Marià Hispano.

Exhibition within the project Twenty-nine chimneys and a tower.

• …and a tower

Until 12/11 · Tuesday to Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm · Monday and Friday from 5 pm to 7 pm · Saturday from 12 pm to 1:30 pm

This exhibition presents four artistic works created especially for this occasion. Based on formal, bodily, sound, and militant investigations, the artists Joan Bennàssar, Violeta Mayoral, PIÑA (Sara Fontán+Clara Tena), and Eulàlia Rovira, have developed a series of pieces that invite us to take a critical look at the urban renewal of Poblenou. Curated by Xavier Acarín Wieland.

Exhibition within the project Twenty-nine chimneys and a tower.

• Icària, August 3, 1987.

From 07/01 to 08/31 · Tuesday to Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm · Monday and Friday from 5 pm to 7 pm · Saturday from 12 pm to 1:30 pm

In July 1987, a team of architects and historians began the tasks to document all the buildings in the Icària neighborhood before their disappearance. The Historical-architectural studies of the sector of Icària Avenue and Carles I Promenade represent an exceptional and fairly unknown document, a work never done before that, in an exhaustive way, left a record of the factories, houses, workshops, and warehouses existing before their destruction within the framework of one of the great urban transformations of Barcelona. Coordinated by Xavier Acarín Wieland.

Exhibition within the project Twenty-nine chimneys and a tower.

• Historical and architectural studies of the area around Avinguda d’Icària and Passeig Carles I

07/07 from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm

In 1987, a group of historians and architects carried out a project to document the Icària neighborhood before its destruction to build the Olympic Village. Gathering with some of its authors: historians Teresa Navas, Reinald González, Francesc Caballé, architect Montse Pàmies, and photographer and artist Martí Llorens. With the screening of videos from the Clara Films collection.