Gràcia special heritage plan

In 2019, the Urban Ecology Department of the Barcelona City Council commissioned our team to coordinate the heritage and botanical assessment for the Gràcia District. The different neighborhoods were assigned to diverse multidisciplinary teams, all operating under a unified methodology and a shared objective: the preservation of the district’s distinct urban morphology. Gràcia’s urban fabric was historically shaped by the model of “Ordenacions”—private subdivisions of agricultural land designated for housing developments. This specific structural pattern was strictly maintained even after its annexation to the city of Barcelona in 1897. All these individual developments shared a common denominator: a central square (such as Plaça del Sol, Diamant, Virreina, Rovira, or Nord), an orthogonal street grid, and narrow plots. The various teams aligned their criteria, using an identical mapping system and standardized building parameters.

Given that the district suffers from a severe deficit of public green spaces (with the notable exception of Park Güell), we collaborated with the environmental team from Barcelona Regional to catalog all private green areas, inner-courtyard gardens, and urban trees. We mapped the existing tree canopy using satellite technology combined with rigorous fieldwork, ultimately proposing targeted protection schemes based on an environmental hierarchy.