Taller Masriera, Cultural center in Dreta de l'Eixample, Spain
Taller Masriera is a neoclassical building at Bailèn Street 70-72 in the Dreta de l'Eixample, Barcelona. Its main facade has a hexastyle portico of fluted Corinthian columns on a podium, reached by a wide staircase of eight steps, and the entrance door was a replica of the Erechtheion in Athens. The original rectangular building stood isolated in a garden, and later side wings and a rear body were added.
The Masriera brothers commissioned architect Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas to build the workshop on Bailèn Street in 1882, and it opened in 1884 as a temple-like studio surrounded by a garden. Lluís Masriera inherited it in 1912 and added two side wings in 1913. He fitted out the Teatro Studium inside, inaugurated in January 1933, where La Barraca performed works by Lope de Vega and Cervantes.
Lluís Masriera, a theatre enthusiast, founded the Belluguet company in 1921 with family members and friends, and the workshop hosted performances through that decade. The Studium Theatre, inaugurated in January 1933, became a meeting place for artists, with tertulias, concerts and plays; La Barraca, the company of Eduardo Ugarte and Federico García Lorca, performed Fuenteovejuna, El caballero de Olmedo and Cervantes's El retablo de las maravillas there.
The building is not currently open to the public, as it is awaiting renovation work. Walking along Bailèn Street gives a clear view of the full facade, and the surrounding blocks of the Eixample grid make it easy to approach from any direction.
The doorway was a replica of the Erechtheion's door in Athens, and the hexastyle portico of fluted Corinthian columns on a podium, reached by eight steps, imitated the Temple of Augustus and the Maison Carrée of Nîmes. The 1932 theatre kept the auditorium in Vilaseca's temple, with the stage in the right wing and the art collection above the bar in the left.
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