Raval

March 28, 2012

Today we went on a trip to the Raval area which used to be China town before 1991. We started off our trip by walking down one of the main blocks of Raval where we saw this building which is normal architecture for this area:

The public areas are in the north and the private areas are in the south. An example of a public area is MACBA which is the skaters area and it is an attractive meeting place for young people

I thought that this was a very interesting place. I had never been there before. There was also a mural on the wall that was put up recently

Also, this area is near a part of UB so many students go there to hang out. Another place visited on our trip was CCCB. 

CCCB is a public gallery where exhibitiions are often showed. When we arrived here i knew i had been there before and then i put two and two together and realized that i had went there for an exhibition with my photography class a few weeks before. The exhibition I saw there was very interesting. There were photos of natural disasters, and people's everyday lives in places like mexico and africa. All the photos told a story. Another interesting aspect of this square is that you can see the skyline in the reflection of windows.

We also went to the Foment de les Arts i del Disseny which is a gallery where young artists can show their work. We went into the crypt where there was a gallery. 

 These are some of the works that were in the crypt:

This is a picture of the lobby area:
We also passed other museums which are part of the public area.

 Most of the apartments look like the apartments below with balconies and very close together. I think one of the most interesting parts of this area was how even after 1982 when the socialist government wanted to make the area a more commercial area, Barcelona still wanted to keep the spirit of the area alive and therefore didn't want people to leave even if they were poor. Instead, they decided to make a public and a private area so they emptied the center of town and put commercial things there as a central  meeting point.  In 1986-1996 Barcelona received the news about the olympic games and prices of soil went up which made this area even more attractive.

 This building was an abandoned building that was taken over by people and they have lived there ever since. I thought that it was very interesting that this was allowed and how the building was painted because something like that would never happen in the U.S.

Other things in this area that are important are schools, high schools, public libraries, hospitals, UB, and Hotel Barcelo. The hotel is a big part of the area. I think that this area seems like a very good place to live either young or old. It seems like a very artsy area. My favorite thing about the area is that they did not want to kick out the poorer people just because they wanted to make some money. It shows a sense of community and putting people over money which isn't seen very often in todays society. Overall, I enjoyed our trip to the Raval area.