Entering the Seny i Rauxa exhibition at the Disseny Hub Barcelona, red curtains give way to red walls and floors, a red-striped ceiling and, at intervals, an unsettling piano drifting through the room. If “seny” and “rauxa” denote a popularly known balance between restraint and audacity, the entrance makes an early case for how you are expected to feel first.

Staged for Barcelona’s nomination as the 2026 UNESCO-UIA World Capital of Architecture, the exhibition traces Catalan architecture non-chronologically since the founding of the Escola d’Arquitectura in 1875. Four hundred works are organized thematically into categories such as landscape, new city, old city, street, building, tenement house and house. They are displayed across the square room’s walls, freestanding blocks and hanging panels. Visitors can either follow the sequence or wander freely. The red lighting is striking, but it makes some of the plans and drawings hard to read. The density of the exhibition works in its favor, as sketches, models and photographs sit beside paintings, sculptures and furniture, revealing affinities that a chronological display would have kept apart. 

Strolling through, one encounters curiosities such as a tiny photograph of Antoni Gaudí’s bed, grand master plans, furniture’s like the butterfly chair or some of Barcelona’s famous bars. It’s genuinely fun to read Catalan architecture this way, taking in so much at once, the exhibitions title always somewhere in the back of my mind. Is it the audacity of Le Corbusier’s Plan Macià, replanning Barcelona as a whole from above? Or Ildefons Cerdà’s Eixample, a rational grid, chamfered corners for light and air and traffic that describes it best? Or is it Barcelona’s cooperative housing, where architects like Lacol work at a modest scale, with future residents rather than for them? Maybe less spectacular than a masterplan, but no less deliberate in shaping how people live together, sharing rooms and kitchens. Every visitor leaves with their own takeaways, leaving room for discussion afterwards on just how madly responsible Catalan architecture actually is. 

iss.