Cerdà: 150 Years of Modernity

The city of Barcelona, built over one hundred and fifty years around the 1859 Reform and Expansion Project by Ildefons Cerdà, highlights the modernity of a way of thinking and a way of making a city.

The approach to the values of the Eixample allows for a reflection on what it means to plan, design, and build a city.

The book is structured into chapters ordered, first, by the elements that enable the construction of the Eixample: housing, the grid, the street, the chamfer, and the sewer; and then, by the blocks and the various configurations associated with residence, industry, facilities, and green spaces, in a planned manner.

The perspective encompasses the entire Eixample, which we call the Cerdà Eixample, as opposed to the more central Eixample, traditionally focused on modernist architecture.