Keys to a city in a golden salt

ALL cities worth their salt go through a golden age and, if they're lucky, they have another. Barcelona has been very lucky indeed; it has had three golden ages - one in the late medieval period, when its influence was felt around much of the Mediterranean; another in the late 19th century with the flowering of Catalan nationalism, and it is now living through its third golden age.

John Graby, general secretary of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, points out that a golden age is produced by a combination of economic and political circumstances that drive a city to change and to express that change. Thus, the Modernisme movement of the late 19th century was a conscious expression using architecture as a vehicle, of Catalan nationalism and Barcelona's emerging middle class.

Similarly, the death of Franco in 1975 liberated Barcelona to express once again its cultural and political identity as the capital of Catalonia - even in the design of its bars and cafes, as places of architectural experimentation. This movement, known as Interiorisme, drew on a surviving craft tradition of making fine objects in wood, steel and other materials, as Modernisme did a century earlier.

Barcelona, Architectures of Exubernncy is an exhibition which draws these two strands together, using 500 superb photographs by Mihail Moldoveanu - a Romanian born architect living in Paris - to contrast Modernisme (essentially an eclectic art nouveau, unique to Catalonia) with the quite stunning contemporary work done by architects in Barcelona over the past 15 years or so.

Opening the exhibition last week, the Spanish ambassador, Fermin Zelada, defined "exuberant" as lively and high spirited, prolific, lavish and abundant. That is certainly true of Barcelona's architecture, in the past and the present, whether it is expressed in Antoni Gaudi's works - notably his extraordinary, still unfinished Sagrada Familia - or in the late 1980s Zsa Zsa bar by Eulalia Gonzalez.

Even frequent visitors to the city, who thought they knew it quite well, have been surprised by the discoveries they have made at this exhibition. As John Graby says, each of them saw a different city. What's useful about the exhibition is that it's like a "whirlwind bus tour where you're seeing it all at once, with all of its elements (at least those which are of compelling interest) brought together".

Though Gaudi is the best known, and quite neurotic, exponent of Catalan Modernisme, this exhibition highlights the work of at least two of his contemporaries - Lluis Domenech i Montaner, whose Palau de la Musica, must surely represent exuberance at its most exhilarating, and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, who recycled motifs from Gothic architecture for his numerous Modernista buildings.

What it's really about is the idea of the city as a continuum. There's an apt quote from Domenech i Montaner, at the beginning of his architectural career in 1878: "This will take more than the labour of two or three generations, because the expected result is global; when attained, the work of each artist of today will be perceived as another drop in the sea of the ideas of the past".

A cornucopia of postcards of Barcelona spills out onto the floor, and the exhibition is divided into a number of themes, such as architecture conceived as spectacle, the free use of history and its models, the fascination of different materials, the influence of decorative arts, of surprise, mystery and the pleasure of geometry. And what permeates it all is the effervescence of the avant garde.

Barcelona's two most recent golden ages are linked in this respect. What the architects of both periods have in common, as Moldoveanu points out in an introductory note, is that they "want to enchant, to make us dream". Thus, the Catalan Modernisme "appears today as very audacious and clever while the contemporary creativity gains unexpected depth when presented against its historical background".

Some projects are repeated in the various thematic sections to make different points. Nightclubs in Barcelona are really electric, in every sense, and it's no surprise that they keep cropping up. The photographs concentrate on details and this can be misleading. You would never guess that the Centre de Cultura Contemporania, completed in 1994, is such an overpowering intrusion into a historic courtyard.

BUT then, the joyful vitality of Barcelona is expressed in its architecture without restraint. The best buildings of the past are preserved for the future, because that is a civic duty. But architects in the Catalan capital would have been quite unable to achieve their work over the past 15 years if they laboured, as their colleagues in Dublin do, under a quite oppressive and reactionary planning regime.

"The reinvention of Barcelona, and the debate about a vision for the city, hash relevance to Dublin at a time when a new city manager is to be appointed shortly," according to David Keane, who has just taken over from Joan O'Connor as president of the RIAI. Even though, as he conceded, there is a new feeling of confidence in the city, there is still no coherent vision of where it's going.

According to Noel Carroll, newly appointed chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce, Dublin, is about to enter a golden age. That may well be true. But it will certainly not reach the dizzying heights of Barcelona while its planners remain devoted to the comfortable, unchallenging cult of Georgian pastiche, persistently missing the big picture while they meddle with architectural details.

We may not be able to afford to despatch all of Dublin's key planners and decision makers to Barcelona, so that they can see its triumphs for themselves, but they should all be required to attend this illuminating exhibition. So should everyone else who has an interest in cities, architecture and the prospects of a golden age.