Casa de la Marina

This building was the first urban apartment block carried out from start to finish by Coderch and Valls. The urban context of the building in the 1950s was not valuable property, namely Barceloneta's narrow streets and Barcelona's industrial port. For this reason, Coderch and Valls designed an introverted housing block where the exterior views are always conditioned by fixed venetian-type blinds. The construction has affinities with the Italian avant-garde of the time, especially with Ignazio Gardella's work. The building has a classic composition in three blocks: a two-storey zocalo for commercial use, combining large glazed areas and small-scale masonry; a six-storey body of apartments, composed by vertical strips of glazed ceramic tiles and the aforementioned white venetian blinds, and the coronation with a big eave of wooden boards.