CaixaForum Barcelona

• Name — CaixaForum Barcelona • Established — 2002 02 • Location — Av. de Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8 08038 Barcelona • Type — Cultural center • Visitors — 782,529 (2011) • Owner — Fundación ”la Caixa” • Public Transit — Plaça d'Espanya • Website — caixaforum.org/es/barcelona

The building was originally commissioned as a textile factory by Casimir Casaramona i Puigcercós, and built by the famous Catalan Modernism architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Called the Casaramona factory, it was completed in 1911, and the same year won the City Council's award for best industrial building. The factory closed in 1919, but reopened as a warehouse for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. In 1940, the building was used as a cavalry barracks for the Spanish Armed Police Corps, and it was used as such until the "la Caixa" banking foundation bought it in 1963. It was opened as a cultural center in February 2002. The building was restored prior to its opening, and a new entrance was built, designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, in a process that included firing 100,000 bricks to match the original ones. The center has almost three acres of exhibition space, a media library, auditorium, classrooms and a restaurant. Visitors descend by escalator to the basement lobby, adorned by a Sol LeWitt mural, then rise again to the exhibition spaces on the ground floor, within the crenelated brickwork.

• Illustration — Main entrance, designed by Arata Isozaki • Illustration — Interior courtyard, showing distinctive window shapes and brickwork • Illustration — A model of the building