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.
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 can be busy especially around lunch hours.
This is a custom design couch covered in 68 sqm of kilim patchwork. Nanimarquina are best known for their rugs, as well as for their special projects, like this one, consisting in a series of comfortable benches covered with some of their iconic materials.
From the menu of the cafeteria, I can recommend the rolls with meat (or salmon), salad and dressings.
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.
The “David Bowie Is” exhibition was an amazing ex
Held until the end of October, Best Designs of the Year was a free entrance exhibition displaying the best in arts, architecture, design and graphics, during 2017. This is a label design by Ladyssenyadora agency for Domenech.Vidal wines.
The Urqiunaona Towers are part of a series of graphic designs of Santiago Restrepo Arias.
Red Lines by Victor Perez-Porro is a painting with oil on canvas, also exhibited at Best Designs of the Year 2017.
Right on Plaça de les Glòries, in front of Disseny Hub, you can enjoy an area equipped with loungers, chairs, tables and parasols. Since May, they’ve also introduced 3 chairs with a USB connection, charged by a built-in solar panel, where you can recharge the battery of your mobile devices while enjoying the sun, chatting with someone or reading a book. As wi-fi, you can use the city’s network, that works really well. The Loungers are also a great place to have your lunch, read a book or just enjoy the sun. The Loungers are available every week day, from 10 am to 8 pm, except for the rainy days.
BruumRuum! is a permanent installation designed in 2013 by Artec3 Studio. The lights on the floor (550 LEDs embedded throughout an area of 3,300 sqm) react to the intensity of voices. There are two speakers where, from 9 to 11pm, you can say ‘hola’ or anything you’d like to see transformed into light design. There are also sensors installed around the plaza so that the colors of light also change according to the noises of the city.
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.
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 BOX is on the first line of places alongside the seaside promenade.
The view captures the entire beach of Barceloneta, up to Hotel Vella (arch. Ricadro Bofill) in the background.
The space has very diverse seating according to mood and necessities.
This area is great for a chat of browsing through a magazine.
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.
Goula/Figuera’s Lines & Dots is a pendant light fitting in which the light, its basic element, relinquishes all its importance to the material, the metal, in this particular case working as would a sculptor. Lines & Dots has its origins in dozens of ink drawings. From those abstract silhouettes there emerged a series of eight shapes, given form using folding rods and soldered by hand by local craftsmen. Eight different modules which are combined using the cable as a pivot. Sculptural light fitting that creates a contrast between shadows and light, transparency and opacity, movement and immobility and whose source of light is an adjustable led, which gives off a warm light and incorporates state of the art technology.
The Round ‘Glass/Float EP’ artwork is signed by Arnau Pi, graphic designer from Barcelona that works with record labels such as Hivern Discs, Vacaciones Permanet, Young Turks, Sony Music UK or Fool’s Gold. Besides music artworks, he is involved in graphic design for fashion labels and branding identity for some of Barcelona’s restaurants.
The space has got a daily agenda of sports (yoga and acro yoga, roller running, pilates, surf functional training, box, swimming or sup) and a weekend agenda of live music events.
If you go there in the afternoon, there’s an amazing scenery that you do not want to miss. The sunset is right behind you still the sky diffuses the colors up to the east side.
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.
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.
This is how the patio looks like as seen from the street. The cafe is on the left side.
The logo of Café Ena gets its shape from the linear design of Gaspar’s logo.
Besides being boldly colorful, the wall is actually a great way to know some of the most important names in Modern Spanish art.
This is one of the many posters signed by renowned artists and included in the collage of the cafe’s wall.
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.
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