It was originally built to house the classrooms, workshops and dependencies of the Industrial and Arts and Crafts School of Sabadell, which had its headquarters there until the early 1960s. From then on, it was remodeled in its interior layout to house the offices of the Obra Social de Caixa Sabadell: the library, the estates of various cultural entities of the city, an auditorium and a conference room.
Today, Espai Cultura is an important meeting point for the arts, education and new technologies; a center committed to society and dedicated to the dissemination, training and production of innovative cultural content, with a quality, diverse programming, open to citizens, and which aims to encourage participation, networking and collaboration between companies, groups and people with common interests.
Throughout the course you will find exhibitions, workshops, family shows, film cycles, activities for schools, visits to the modernist heritage of the 1859 Caixa Sabadell Foundation or, on summer evenings, the scenic proposals of the Fresc Festival, among other events.
The Espai Cultura is also the meeting place for local entities and organizations, which use the different spaces of the center to celebrate their activities. It has exhibition halls, auditoriums, classrooms and a garden with amphitheater.
The building
The building of the Espai Cultura Fundació 1859, which housed the Industrial and Arts and Crafts School for fifty years, has a rectangular floor plan and a long façade on the street. It consists of basement, ground floor and two-storey apartment, and the roof is gable. One headboard is flat and the other ends with a tall cylindrical tower that protrudes in height from the roof of the rest of the building and is topped by a conical roof that houses a wide spiral staircase that communicates the entrance hall, located on the ground floor, with the upper floors. The classrooms are illuminated through large windows open to the street facade and are connected by a long corridor that runs through the interior of the garden facade. The construction that housed the workshops is in conjunction with the building, is located at an angle to the flat tester, has the sawtooth roof supported by beams composed of riveted metal profiles and is illuminated by the sides of the roof.
The composition of the street facade is solved by bodies of the same proportions, but with openings of various layout, arranged alternately and slightly recessed with respect to the line of the facade. The whole is unified with the tower by a horizontal logic, enhanced by the stone plinth, the brick seen on the ground floor and the stucco on the floor floors. A powerful eaves that follows the mansard-shaped structures, formed by the large windows on the second floor and the roof slope, forms three large triangular barbecues. The composition of the tower highlights the verticality, with long and narrow openings, arranged in progressive height, which allow to guess the layout of the staircase, and others of greater dimension, arranged together and at the same level of the only floor at the top, lighten and give slenderness to the cylindrical body, which, topped due to the conical roof raised on a wide and powerful eaves, it forms a unique urban presence.
Mention should also be made of other elements such as the arch, column and capital of the entrance hall, the wide helical staircase, and the design and forging of its railing. In the lobby, Antoni Estruch (1872-1957), painted by Antoni Estruch (1872-1957), shows the moment when Chief Councillor Rafael Casanova was wounded while flying the flag of Santa Eulalia in defense of the stronghold of Portal Nou.
The architectural heritage of the 1859 Caixa Sabadell Foundation is recognized and distinguished by several official bodies, so the three main facilities of the Foundation are protected by the Special Plan for the Protection of the Heritage of Sabadell.
On the other hand, the Foundation's headquarters building and the Espai Cultura Fundació 1859 are listed as Architectural Cultural Heritage by the Generalitat de Catalunya and are part of the European Route of Modernism.
Sustainability and accessibility
As part of the Foundation's commitment to publicize its heritage, the Foundation's buildings are part of the Catalunya Convention Bureau program, and both the Museum of Life in the Country at Espai Natura Foundation 1859 and the auditoriums and classrooms of the Espai Cultura Fundació 1859 are members of the Biosphere program, which recognizes establishments committed to responsible tourism. To learn more about it, consult the page dedicated to sustainable commitment.
Regarding accessibility, Espai Cultura is prepared in several areas detailed below:
Espai Cultura is located in the center of Sabadell, with close access to public transport: FGC, Rodalies and several urban and interurban bus lines. The accesses to the stations and platforms of the stations is fully adapted for people with reduced mobility, as well as access to buses. For trips by private vehicle, Espai Cultura is located near municipal paid car parks with adapted accesses, and if necessary, the garden has space for vehicles to enter.
All entrances to the building are adapted for the access of people with reduced mobility, and have ramps and, in the case of the main entrance, railings.
Both the offices and the rest of the centre's spaces (auditoriums, multipurpose classrooms, exhibition halls) have elevators and other signalling elements to guarantee their movement without hindrance and in some cases autonomously.
Sustainable Commitment
Aware of the importance of maintaining sustainable development, and assuming the principles and objectives adopted specifically at the World Summit on Sustainable Development 2015, COP 21 and the World Charter for Sustainable Tourism + 20, the Espai Cultura Foundation 1859 is committed to carry out a sustainable management of all its activities, through the adoption of commitments aimed at preventing, eliminating or reducing the impact of our facilities. activities and activities, both internal and external, as well as to optimize the sustainability of the establishment improving its behavior with the environment.
In this same sense, our entity has adopted the following Responsible Tourism Policy, through which it undertakes to comply with the requirements established in the Biosphere membership, which includes, among other things, the legal requirements that regulate the effects generated by tourism activity.
Likewise, we are committed to motivating and training our staff with training and awareness actions on the principles of Responsible Tourism, to promote good environmental practices in the environment and participate in external activities, and to inform both internally and externally about the environmental improvements and actions of the entity.
Likewise, our entity expresses the express commitment to fight against sexual exploitation or any other form of commercial exploitation and harassment, in particular of children, adolescents, women and minorities; and we commit ourselves to adopt measures of universal accessibility.
One of our main objectives is to improve sustainable management, assuming the commitments of continuous improvement in all areas of sustainability: social, economic and environmental, as well as customer satisfaction. To this end, the projects of future extensions of the facilities or activities will be subjected to criteria of sustainability and efficiency in the use of resources.
All this work and commitment to sustainability and responsible management of space are aligned with our adherence to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which you can consult through this link.
