MACBA visit: Richard Meier’s museum

The "Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona" was designed by Richard Meier, a Californian architect. He does the same style designs everywhere. The construction of the building was finished in 1995.

It is a very straight construction, it has a cylinder in the centre that goes through all the floors, and there are three levels of expositions.

                            from: https://www.barcelonacheckin.com/es/r/guia_barcelona/museos/macba.php

                        https://www.macba.cat/ca/sobre-macba/el-museu/espais-arquitectura/edifici-meier

It is situated in "El Raval", a multicultural neighbourhood with a gothic style. The design and colour (white and new) of the museum clearly stands out, creating a huge contrast between it and the rest of the place.

I think that El Raval has a distinct environment, although it is related with conflict there are nice places, but also places where you can see the bad conditions in which some people have to live. So, with the construction of the building I think they wanted to renovate its image, but the thing they have achieved is increasing the prices of the houses, making more difficult to have a worthy home in a place where the income is low.

Moreover, it was built a little before the Olympic Games in Barcelona started, it shows a clear intention of the politicians to clear the image in front of the rest of the world, covering the reality and not thinking in the people that was living there.

So, in conclusion, I would say that the architecture is very elegant, useful and that the creation of a museum of contemporary art is excellent but, on the other hand, selecting the place just to improve the view of it, should allow us to think and reflect about the intentions.