EMBT · 2005 · Barcelona
An old market under a wave of colour
Completed in 2005, the renovation of Barcelona's Mercat de Santa Caterina by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT) crowned a nineteenth-century market hall with an undulating roof tiled in some 325,000 hexagonal ceramic pieces in 67 colours — a vivid, pixelated canopy evoking the fruit and vegetables sold beneath it. The billowing timber-and-steel roof floats over the preserved market walls, weaving old and new into a single gesture.
One of Miralles's last projects before his early death in 2000, completed by Tagliabue, the works also uncovered medieval ruins now displayed on site. Both a working neighbourhood market and an act of urban acupuncture, it revitalised a quiet corner of the old city and became an emblem of Barcelona's inventive contemporary architecture.