Freestyle | a Route for a Day

Cafeteria at Design Museum, BOX by the beach of Barceloneta, Fundacio Gaspar right in El Born. Art, coffee, a snack, digital nomads in Spain, yoga, swim, relax.


Cafeteria at Design Hub

Disseny Hub Barcelona hosts the Design Museum of Barcelona, focusing on contemporary space design, product, information and fashion design. The building, conceived as a gateway to 22@, the innovation district of the city, includes, besides exhibition, events and documentation spaces, a restaurant-café and several attractive public spaces, both in- and outdoors.

Disseny Hub Barcelona
The area is filled with landmarks of contemporary architecture, among which Torre Agbar (arch. Jean Nouvel). This is the rear side of Disseny Hub, showing the various levels of the public space around. The Cafeteria is actually the underground level, if regarded from the main entrance. The lake acts as a compositional emphasis relating to these levels.

The Cafeteria of the Disseny Hub opens towards the Elisava Gardens, the nice and quiet public area just behind Plaça de les Glòries. The outside terrace is a great place for sunny days. The interior is a mix of undulated benches with kilim tapestry – Nani Marquina, with a very long bar in the shape of a large bookcase from where you can take your coffee, your lunch, a sandwich, a vermouth with some olives or their super tasty gluten-free brownie, my favourite. The service is run by the S. Sauleda Group with long track record in the food services industry.

http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/dissenyhub/en


BOX Barcelona

BOX Barcelona is a place for arts, music and sports, located in Barceloneta, right in front of the sea. The ground floor is the Nike store and the upper floor – the attic – is an open space designed for meetings and socializing, art displays and live music sessions, yoga and pilates, working or reading, checking the agenda of sports events or just chilling.

BOX Barcelona
The mats area is a space to work/chat/relax while having the beach in front of you.

The space has everything from lounging mats by the window, and having the sea in front, to a concrete table to open your laptop and work at; lockers; wardrobe; nice things, books, artwork all around; the Heartbeat Experience application. Quite a lot.

The artwork at BOX is hugely diverse, ranging from interior design objects – furniture, lamps, ceramic bowls or decorative pieces, to art series, photography, books, magazines, graphic posters or record artworks.

https://nikeboxbarcelona.com/en


Café Ena at Fundació Gaspar

Café Ena is a cheerful space in the patio of Fundació Gaspar. I went there several times during the summer, and can’t wait to go again as, for the moment, the place is being under some maintenance works. The Gaspars have been involved in the promotion of modern and contemporary art in Barcelona for over a century, mainly through the legendary Sala Gaspar, where artist like Picasso, Miró, Braque, Calder or Tàpies, among others, showed at length. The Foundation is located in the building known as Palau Cervelló, at nº 25 on Montcada Street – one of the most spectacular Gothic routes of the city.

Cafe Ena - A view From Inside
The cafe’s interior opens towards the inner Gothic patio of the palace, looking straight at the staircase that leads to the exhibition spaces of Gaspar.

The café’s fresh and informal style was designed by artist Javier Plácido. The background wall is a collage of posters that belong to Braque, Chagall, Calder, Dalí, Pollok, de Kooning, Chillida, Sam Francis or Warhol, among many others: the artists exhibited at Sala Gaspar, decades ago, and they designed their own posters.

Ena is a nice place for opening your laptop and working for a while, as it’s quiet and calm, wi-fi works good and there’s a nice menu to choose from.

There’s also a bookstore, here, at Fundació Gaspar, selling posters, souvenirs, small decoration and an extensive selection of art books, magazines, catalogs and vintage posters of the artists who participated in past exhibits at Sala Gaspar. While being here, you can also enjoy the museum space, now under some maintenance works but reopening soon with a new exhibition on contemporary art.

The Gothic Patio of Fundació Gaspar

https://www.fundaciogaspar.org/explore/

 

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