Architecture is not just what we see; it is also what we hear, smell and touch. Some buildings or rooms only accompany us for periods of time, while others we have long known surprise us on occasion. With the theme “SENT L’ARQUITECTURA,” the 16th edition of 48H Open House Barcelona invited visitors to rediscover the city through their senses. For one weekend, Barcelona itself became the exhibition. Buildings usually closed to the public, opened their doors and locals were invited to experience their architecture.

At first, the range of options felt a bit overwhelming, just as did queuing for up to two hours, but a real-time online tracker of the waiting times helped. Participating buildings could be identified either by Open House stickers or by the red lanyards volunteers wore in front of the buildings. With good company by my side, queuing turned into collective anticipation, itself part of the experience.

As I moved through the buildings and streets of Barcelona, two things stood out to me. First, the craftsmanship and second, the great care and attention to detail: An important-looking steel-framed glass door; French-style sliding doors elegantly vanishing into recesses; an original steel-framed industrial window façade full of light; the sound of the main door of a palace; the smell of a palace garden; a painted flat fresco stucco façade with a repertoire of Neo-Arabic and Neo-Gothic inspired forms. Creating such details requires specialists who understand their craft as much as inhabitants who appreciate and care about these details so that we are able to experience and feel Barcelona’s architectural gems. However, it is when you hear the alarm go off in the middle of your guided tour of the fire station and you see fire trucks rush out for a real-time emergency involving a fallen palm tree on a highway that you get the full experience of the place. The festival’s theme was not so much imposed as self-activated in the end. Nonetheless Open House BCN managed to unlock much appreciated new building memories and feelings about the city’s architecture. Too often, we focus only on the visual, when it’s the interplay of all senses that shapes our experience. 

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