04 PERMEATING BOUNDARIES

Similar to other European cities, Barcelona experienced the rise of Bourgeoise, waves of liberal and rational thinking, the force of a competitive market, and the spiking need for housing in cities in the mid-19th century. Urban expansion became an unstoppable force led by middle-class people. Ildefons Cerdà, a Catalan civil engineer, proposed the Eixample (the expansion) as an urbanization strategy for the city in 1859. He carefully examined the city's topography and set rigorous rules for the Eixample grid: 133m-wide for each block (measured from road centerlines) with 65m-wide internal courtyards, 20m-wide streets, 8m intervals between street trees, and 45-degree corner cuts for traffic.

All the rules are aiming to increase the health of urban dwellers and the living condition of the city.

Cerdà's vision and legacy remain influential to this day for the vision he had for urban public space. He described the city as "vias and intervias" (street and non-street), envisioning an urban environment that germinates from how the public lives and uses the public space instead of architectural massings. Cerdà’s strict rules form an urban board game that allows flexibility and contemporary interpretation - carriages and pedestrian traffics in the 1800s, the emergence, and dominance of cars from the 19th-20th century, the metro system's construction and expansion since the 1920s, and the present ideologies of the walkable, smart, and green city - all find there a place in Cerdà’s grid, weaving layers of cultural and social significance on the urban fabric.