The World Capital of Architecture presents an ode to complex Barcelona

Barcelona"Trying to understand the complexity of the city begins with observing it." This phrase closes the video that concludes the exhibition. Barcelona = (Diversity + Intensity) x Complexity, But it could open. The exhibition, which opens this Thursday at the former headquarters of the Gustavo Gili publishing house and will run until December 13, is an invitation to contemplate the Catalan capital with a fresh perspective, and at the same time an ode to large cities like Barcelona despite the mounting challenges.

The exhibition, a "neuromania" of the city's chief architect, Maria Buhigas, as she herself has admitted, is part of Barcelona's program as World Capital of Architecture and is curated by demographer Andreu Domingo, geographer Francesc Muñoz, and urban planner Eulà-. Four academics from different disciplines have come together to offer a vision of what a large city is today.

The result is a kind of "laboratory on the city" in which the observation of data, processes, and experiences helps to understand what defines a city today and also to debunk some myths. Among them, for example, that the arrival of newcomers to the city is a phenomenon that has always existed, or that nowadays people born abroad are mitigating the effect of the progressive aging of Barcelona's residents.

Throughout the exhibition, it becomes clear that Barcelona is diverse, home to more than 180 nationalities and nearly 300 languages, and that over 2.6 million people—residents, workers, and visitors—move through the Catalan capital every day. Visitors can also observe the actual flow of people at different times of day in city spaces such as Sants station—3.18 million mobile devices detected per week—or Plaça Catalunya—5.43 million.

Far from being an overwhelming sea of ​​data, however, the curated approach of Domestic Data Streamers allows the exhibition's theoretical narrative to be translated into an accessible and educational language for the visitor. Magnifying glasses, measuring tapes, shoes, and stacks of bricks serve to delve deeper into demographics, movement patterns, the city's hidden costs, and key concepts of the exhibition such as intensity.

In this latter case, the colored bricks allow for a comparison of compact urban landscapes where amenities, services, commercial activity, and housing are mixed, such as the Eixample or Gràcia districts, with other low-intensity areas like Vallvidrera or predominantly residential zones like Bellvitge. This contrast shows how each urban model generates different ways of inhabiting the city and accessing collective resources, and it highlights the compact city as the habitat that best fosters collective solutions.

An analog survey

Another objective of the exhibition is to demonstrate that cities are not a static snapshot but a living organism defined by the actions of their inhabitants. Therefore, upon entering, the first thing visitors encounter is a large analog survey where they can mark with a thread—yellow or blue depending on whether they were born in Barcelona or not—their opinion of the city, their preferred walking routes, or when they feel a connection to the Catalan capital. When the exhibition closes on December 13th, coinciding with the end of Barcelona's designation as a World Capital of Culture, these threads will provide a snapshot of both the exhibition's success and our understanding of the city. This model, while often seen as a focal point for problems such as housing, inequality, and the climate crisis, must be, according to First Deputy Mayor Laia Bonet, at the forefront of solutions.