Noucentisme architecture: how to identify it

what it is

Noucentisme is the Catalan turn from Modernisme to classical order and Mediterranean forms, in architecture from about 1906 to the early 1930s. Buildings have regularly composed fronts, plain volumes and smooth walls of white or colored stucco (plaster) or brick, built to classical proportions. Decoration is limited and applied: glazed ceramic tiles, sgraffito (patterns scratched into a plaster coat) and terracotta panels. Typical buildings are municipal schools, town houses, a flour mill, and garden-city villas.

In Girona, Rafael Masó renovated the Masó House (1911-1919), whose river facade is painted white with yellow glazed tiles, and built the Farinera Teixidor flour mill and family house in stages between 1910 and 1923. In Barcelona, Josep Goday's Escola Baixeras has terracotta and sgraffito panels on children's themes, and Francesc Folguera's Casal de Sant Jordi (1929-1931) is a nine-story office and apartment building. Catalan Modernisme used rippling facades and broken-tile mosaics; Noucentisme replaced them with ordered compositions and smooth surfaces.

how to spot one

Stucco wall A wall coated with stucco, a plaster of cement or lime, sand and water, finished smooth or textured. It is common on Spanish Colonial Revival, Mission Revival and Mediterranean Revival buildings. Symmetrical facade A facade, or main front, whose left and right halves mirror each other, usually with the main door at the center. It is standard on Georgian, Federal, Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts buildings. Decorative tilework Glazed ceramic tiles, fired clay with a glassy coating, used to finish walls, floors and fireplace surrounds. Examples include Portuguese and Spanish painted azulejos, Islamic geometric patterns and Arts and Crafts art tiles.

Also look for

Cornice Parapet Round arch Bay window

history

The term Noucentisme was coined in 1906 by the writer Eugeni d'Ors, and in the same year Enric Prat de la Riba published La nacionalitat catalana, a foundational text for the movement. The movement, tied to the right-wing Catholic Regionalist League, rejected the emotional excess of Modernisme in favor of classicism and order. In architecture, Rafael Masó of Girona (1880-1935) was among its early figures. Between 1917 and 1923 Josep Goday designed municipal school groups in Barcelona, including Baixeras, Lluís Vives, Pere Vila and Ramon Llull.

Masó also designed the first house of the S'Agaró garden city, Senya Blanca (completed 1924), and Francesc Folguera continued that project after Masó's death in 1935. The dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923-1930) repressed Catalanism, which weakened the movement's political base. In the 1930s rationalist architecture displaced the style, and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) ended it.

where to find it

Girona and Barcelona: Masó's house and Farinera Teixidor in Girona, Goday's municipal schools and Folguera's Casal de Sant Jordi in Barcelona, plus the S'Agaró garden city on the Costa Brava.

easy to confuse with

Sagrada Família, an example of Catalan Modernisme

Catalan Modernisme Barcelona's dream architecture: rippling stone facades, roofs scaled in broken-tile mosaic, and structure borrowed from bones and trees.

Neoclassical Buildings modeled closely on Greek and Roman temples: grand columned porches, domes, and plain, symmetrical walls.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, an example of Mediterranean Revival

Mediterranean Revival Stucco walls under red clay tile roofs, arched windows, wrought iron balconies, courtyards, and bell towers on hotels and villas.