Caixaforum

This is a turret on top of a former textile factory (yes, even factories are nice here). The factory became a warehouse, then stables and garages for the national police force.
It is now one of the many (73 at the last count) museums in town, the Caixaforum. Modern art, temporary exhibitions (right now one about the great Federico Fellini).

Casimir Casaramona i Puigcercós (Vic 1838 – Barcelona 1913) commissioned the famous architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch (Mataró 1867 – Barcelona 1956) to design a factory for his textile-production enterprise. In addition to being a widely acknowledged architect whose works included the Amatller, Macaya, Quadras and Terradas houses, Puig i Cadafalch also played a leading role in the art-nouveau movement alongside Gaudí and Domènech i Montaner.
Puig i Cadafalch completed the Casaramona factory in 1911, culminating his art-nouveau period with it. The building features the simplicity and clarity of the thoroughly worked-out masterpiece: its bare brickwork is topped by Catalan vaults resting on castiron columns and enclosing light-filled, spacious workshops. Its response to the triumph of the horizontal that was characteristic of the local Gothic style is presented through the rhythm of its battlements on the one hand, but also and more particularly through the bold aspect conferred on the building by its two slender towers. It was awarded the City Council’s prize for the best industrial building in that same year.

The Casaramona factory was closed down just seven years after its opening. After that, it was pressed into service as a warehouse during the Barcelona World Fair of 1929, and in 1940 it was converted into stables and garages for the National Police Force. “la Caixa” acquired the building in 1963, and in 1992 it was decided to return this building of great artistic value to Barcelona and to the country as a whole, while lending it a new function with social, cultural and educational aims, it thus becoming CaixaForum.
The architects Arata Isozaki, Francisco Javier Asarta, Roberto Luna and Robert Brufau all played their part in the refurbishment and extension work.