Thursday, 20 September 2007 | Levent OZLER
Barcelona in Progress
 Barcelona in Progress is an exhibition presenting Barcelona's dramatic Post-Franco transformation through the present (1981 - 2004). Architectural models, renderings and photographs outline a framework for the progressive urban trajectory this city has chartered, and a global context for evaluating developments in large scale metropolitan planning.
For this occasion Barcelona's Commissioner for Infrastructures and Urban Planning and CEO of Barcelona Regional, organizer and promoter of this exhibition, Mr. Josep A. Acebillo flew in to open the exhibition, give a lecture and have a meeting with his colleagues from the Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade.
The exhibition opens at Superspace Gallery Sep 13 2007. The exhibition can be viewed until Sep 30, 2007.
From the city's first small concrete sqaures in the 1980s to today's large scale infrastructures, Barcelona's development reflects a rapidly changing world. During the initial phase of Barcelona's urban transformation, immediately upon the advent of democracy, there was a great deal of confidence in the positive effects of new public spaces. More than one hundred forty urban spaces designed over a seven-year period (1981-1988) clearly contributed to an intense renovation of Barcelona's urban landscape, as well as to the revitalization of its urban identity.
These urban projects, almost all of which were small-scale, had a transforming effect beyond their immediate environment, in that they formed part of a broader urban project. This model of urban transformation, in which large-scale changes and substantial objectives are obtained on the basis of numerous small and individual strategically situated interventions, has been labeled 'Urban Acupuncture'.
The urban effects of the Olympic project did not end with the Olympic Games in 1992. On the contrary, Barcelona's international positioning as a result of the event's success, the construction of substantial cultural infrastructures (Catalonian Museum of Art, Auditorium, National Theatre, Contemporary Art Museum, etc.) and the restructuring of the historic commercial port into an urban space, resulted in Barcelona's transformation into a first-tier tourist destination.
This exhibition captures the current stage of projects that are on the working tables of professionals who work for a city in progress.
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