The Palace of Electricity. Pere Falqués and the construction of the Vilanova power plant for the Catalana de Electricidad company

Abstract

This article is focussed on the power plant building of the new electric company Catalana de Electricidad, built by the architect Pere Falqués in Barcelona in the late nineteenth century. This building was conceived in a very original way, as the aesthetic and symbolic aspects have an outstanding importance not seen in other similar buildings of that time, such as the power plant that the Compañía Barcelonesa de Electricidad had built in the Avinguda del Paral·lel a few years previously.
Thus, we not only analyse the complex building process, but also highlight how Pere Falqués, the architect, was able to combine the functional and aesthetic aspects, with the aim of creating an architecture that expressed the meaning of electricity as a symbol of modernity at the end of the nineteenth century, and an architecture that fulfilled the new company’s necessity of representativeness, and that rivaled the monumental corporate buildings of the gas companies in the very centre of Barcelona.