The Barceloneta Market located on the maritime part of Barcelona, designed by the practice of Josep Mias Gifre, MIAS Architects.

It was an attempt to explain a reality and to offer a new and fuller meaning to an architectural project, beyond resolving a programme or commission. As early as the competition stage architects did a collage with some of Cesar Manrique's fantastic fish, drawings for children they hoped might embody and express the joy of these people: their liveliness, their energy, their enthusiasm in the face of frequent hardship.

The Market has always been an element of social cohesion in the neighborhood, a landmark, sometimes almost secret and visible only to its inhabitants. This condition of density that the market has in relation to the city should be a condition of the project, so that the building and its immediate surroundings actually become a clear point of reference in this corner of the city of Barcelona.

The market seeks to form part of the neighborhood, its urban fabric, and is redirected toward the squares front and rear - formerly no square existed, and the bays that made up the market crossed.

The new metal figures create new market spaces, not touching the ground, but suspended from the old structure, not a in real manner, since the two structures, the old and new, never really overlap structurally, rather they do so in a false equilibrium. The imprisoned, tamed building writhes within this space, a certain violence in its rebuilt form, acquiring a reality that lies between the memory of its former self and its new ambition. It uncurls, curls back up, and offers a succession of new spaces to discover.