Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya
About the institution
Photograph of the building: © Jaume Orpinell, 1994
The College of Architects of Catalonia was founded over eighty years ago, since then it has established a solid reputation, both at home and abroad, as a renowned centre for prestigious architecture.
The College's mission is to defend the social value of architecture and town planning for society in general, and to do so in representation of architects themselves.
The College has almost 10,000 affiliated architects throughout Catalonia and is organised into five geographical demarcations, Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona, Lleida and Ebre, and it has numerous delegations in order to attend to the needs of its affiliates at a more local level.
Its Photographic Archive was created in 2007 as part of the College's Historical Archive as a result of the need, having assumed responsibility for the former Image Documentation Centre, to gather together all the photographic heritage dispersed throughout all the areas covered by the College. The aim was to prevent any loss or damage that might otherwise have been caused on account of the lack of good conservation and installation facilities.
At the present time the collection in the Photographic Archive is of such magnitude that it can be considered to be one of the best image archives in the whole of Spain.
Notable, amongst other collections, are the three large image collections brought together since the archive was founded. These have been organised according to topic, photographer's name and geographical location respectively and include collections of photographs of great importance for our country, such as those by Francesc Català-Roca and Oriol Maspons; Lluís Domènech i Montaner's Romanesque collection; the glass plate negatives made in Gaudí's workshop and the vintage prints attributed to Opisso, from the Matamala collection.
