Author: SANMARTI MARTINEZ, CLAUDIA
Thesis file: (contact the
Doctoral School to confirm you have a valid doctoral degree and to get the link to the thesis)
Programme: DOCTORAL DEGREE IN ARCHITECTURAL, BUILDING CONSTRUCTION AND URBANISM TECHNOLOGY
Department: Department of Architectural Technology (TA)
Mode: Normal
Deposit date: 19/05/2025
Reading date: 16/06/2025
Reading time: 11:00
Reading place: ETSAB (Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona) - Planta Baixa - Sala de GrausAv. Diagonal, 649-651 - 08028 - Barcelona
Thesis director: ONECHA PEREZ, ANA BELEN | GRAUS ROVIRA, RAMON
Thesis abstract: Domènech i Montaner, a cultured architect and up-to-date with European developments, found in construction an ally to shape his architecture. In this, he did not stray too far from the dictates of Viollet-le-Duc: only a new architecture would emerge if new structural principles were used. However, Viollet’s suggestions sparked new research in Domènech, and the evolution of his architecture eventually diverged from some of these principles.At the beginning of his professional career, Domènech left the structural iron ostentatiously visible, in the best tradition of structural rationalism spreading across Europe. But for him, construction is not a neutral matter; it also has a political dimension, like the fight for the Catalan language or the defense of Catalan civil rights. Brick construction would be identified as the genuinely Catalan form of construction and would be mythologized by the Modern Catalan School. The use of the diaphragm arch, the cultivation of the thin brick wall, and the exaltation of the vault should also be interpreted from this perspective.Although the tile vault was a technique of medieval origin and was widespread across much of the Mediterranean basin, in Catalonia, from the mid-19th century, it began a great expansion, combined with metal rod ties, especially in industrial architecture. The models of English mills were imported but improved and adapted to the country’s construction tradition.Domènech’s early works combine the constructive knowledge of the country’s professional masonry and its "Catalan construction" with the introduction of iron as a structural element. However, the technique of tile vault, in jack archs, balconies and stairs, is used for very small spans: it helps to construct his architecture, but it does not configure it in any special way.But since the ambitious project of the Hospital de Sant Pau and la Santa Creu, the essential element of Domènech i Montaner’s architecture is the tile vault with iron ties. The vault defines all of his spaces (barrel, bohemian, ribbed, tracery, with pendentives, tiled, plastered...) and is tensioned on its extrados by very sophisticated iron structures, which are never visible. The vault is the unit of aggregation, the element of re-signification of representative spaces, and the most functional instrument for service spaces.Domènech is not alone on this path. Before him, some of his prestigious colleagues in the profession were also working with the constructive possibilities offered by the tile vault technique, like Guastavino, who was thriving in the United States, and Gaudí, who was experimenting with its geometric and structural expressiveness. Around the Barcelona School of Architecture, there was a collective awareness of the importance of this technique as a defining feature of Catalan architecture.Lluís Domènech, and the early stage of his son Pere Domènech’s work, were so convinced of the potential of this system that they applied it to all kinds of buildings: hospitals, rental housing, theaters, warehouses, and factories. They experimented with its possibilities in combination with iron, taking spans to the limits and optimizing the structural material to be used. It reached the point where they even moved the rod ties and hoops away from the most efficient placement height, in order to give the supporting role of the spatial prominence to arches, vaults, and domes.But when the time came to introduce reinforced concrete and steel as structural grids in architecture, Domènech did not have time to change strategy. For him, the cultivation of "Catalan construction," and all that it represented, was and remains his path of discovery.
