Reclaiming courtyards in the name of Cerdà

The city's "Interiors d'illa" programme, told through two neighbouring examples Standing here, you can see an vision of Eixample that never really became reality. Within a few metres you can step into two Interiors d'illa (Barcelona's official term for publicly accessible block interiors) that feel completely different, yet come from the same idea: bringing back pieces of Cerdà's lost utopia inside the Eixample grid. Cerdà imagined the manzana as a breathable urban block, with inner courtyards that let in light, ventilation and shared green space. What the city built instead was the profitabl…