The Barcelona Technical Architecture College (CATEB) claims the importance of this profession with the upcoming reopening of its headquarters on Bon Pastor street, next to Diagonal avenue, after a long rehabilitation process that began in early 2025 and will culminate on November 5 with the official reopening of this building crowned by Joan Brossa’s iconic grasshopper, the monumental 3-ton steel sculpture that now shines like new after a restoration that has renewed the deteriorated elements and recovered the original colors of the artist and poet’s work.
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Bega Clavero and Alejandro Soldevila, members of the CATEB board, explain to La Vanguardia that the comprehensive renovation of the corporate headquarters has been conceived as an exercise in deconstruction rather than a simple demolition, with a total recovery and reuse of materials, as corresponds to the current commitment to sustainability that should be applied to the construction world. The goal of the Bastida project, led by a broad multidisciplinary team of professionals headed by Àlex Clarà and Júlia Andrés (AARDE Studio), is to open the building to the street, to the college’s clients, and to the general public.
The rehabilitated property proposes a sustainable and replicable model for many other buildings
The change from the previous headquarters is radical. That gray, opaque, hermetic building has become an open, bright space that enhances natural light and energy efficiency. The most visible transformation is the one carried out on the façade, now equipped with a double skin that highlights the “bastida” (the scaffold) which, besides serving as a climate filter, becomes a new symbol of the profession’s identity. Another notable element of the brand-new home of the technical architects is the ground floor agora, which will be a meeting space for professionals, institutions, and the public.
Despite the profound changes experienced, the transformation of the CATEB headquarters has respected and enhanced the visual poem that Joan Brossa depicted on the building’s façade and roof. In the coming weeks, on the new skin of the façade of this property, initially designed (1975) as a residential building and later transformed into the college’s headquarters by Federico Correa and Alfons Milà, the letters – about a hundred – of various colors so characteristic of the technical architecture house that make up the visual poem will reappear.
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Brossa’s legacy in the new architecture, Clavero and Soldevila point out, will also endure with the facelift given to the “llagost” (grasshopper) that crowns the building. This insect, considered a symbol of wisdom in some indigenous cultures, retains the A (for aparejador), emblem of the professional college. Rumor has it that the artist, a known anticlerical, deliberately placed his work with the insect’s rear pointing to the neighboring parish of Mare de Déu de Núria, although an equally or more reliable version suggests that Brossa faced his grasshopper toward the Diagonal to give greater visibility to the sculpture.
The complete renovation of the CATEB central headquarters could not be more timely. It coincides with Barcelona’s celebration as the World Capital of Architecture 2026. The Barcelona Technical Architects College, which brings together more than 6,500 professionals in the province of Barcelona, has participated in the program of events of this occasion with the Barcelona Technical Architecture Festival (Artec), which has developed cultural, professional, and educational activities on issues such as housing, building quality, health, rehabilitation, and new construction techniques and materials.
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The culmination of this program of activities promoted by CATEB will be on November 5, coinciding with the inauguration of the new headquarters. That day, an interactive exhibition (“The body we inhabit”) will open to the public, symbolically turning the technical architects’ house into a large “building hospital.”
November 5
Opening show by La Fura dels Baus
The reopening of the CATEB headquarters on November 5 will be enlivened by a show created especially for the occasion by La Fura dels Baus, who will turn the new façade of the Bon Pastor street building into the stage for their acrobatic dances. It would not be surprising if the artists interact with the “llagost,” which, surprisingly, is not part of the Small Urban Landscapes of Barcelona catalog, an anomaly to be corrected.
The exhibition proposal created by Domestic Data Streamers is closely related to the meaning of this profession, which is making great efforts to adapt to new social demands. The exhibition, open until January 4, 2027, will show how buildings, like living beings, age, breathe, and get sick. Through façade biopsies, thermographies, microscopes, materials, and various data contributions, visitors will get an idea of what happens beneath a building’s skin and how seemingly technical aspects – from moisture to thermal bridges, poor ventilation, or the use of inappropriate materials – can end up affecting people’s comfort, economy, and health.
Alejandro Clavero and Bega Soldevila point out that the renovation of the CATEB headquarters represents a very strong commitment to rehabilitation and proposes a model replicable to many other buildings, both private and institutional or corporate.
The final touches are being completed these days on a project that has required an investment of about 5 million euros, with the support of Caixa d’Enginyers, and has acted on about 3,200 square meters. It is expected that on October 16, a few days before the official inauguration, the fifty or so people who work at the CATEB headquarters, who during the year and a half that the works lasted have temporarily moved to premises on Buenos Aires street, will return.
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