Urban implementation of Catholic parish churches in Barcelona

Description

This dataset is based on the working premise that Catholic parish churches can be studied not only as architectural objects, but also as urban elements whose position, orientation, and adjacent public spaces help describe different forms of urban growth in Barcelona. The data document the urban implementation of 132 Catholic parish churches located within the municipal boundaries of Barcelona and organized across the city’s ten official municipal districts. The dataset contains ten district-scale maps and three associated tables. The maps represent the 132 church enclaves using a homogeneous graphic criterion: each parish church is identified by a Latin-cross symbol indicating its orientation, while the public space in its immediate surroundings is highlighted with a thickened line. All ten maps are drawn at the same scale, allowing the position of the churches, the morphology of adjacent public spaces, and the configuration of each district to be compared under a single cartographic criterion. The data show that the relationship between parish churches and public space varies across Barcelona’s different urban fabrics. The dataset records five main urban-implementation categories: strict street alignment; setback from the street creating a widening or atrium; associated square or open space; concealed block-interior location; and camouflaged condition, either inserted at ground-floor level or integrated within the ordinary built grain of the neighbourhood. A chamfer condition is also recorded as an informative subcount, especially relevant in the Eixample grid. The three tables allow the mapped information to be interpreted and reused quantitatively. Table 1 provides a district-level summary including area, number of churches, density, and counts by urban-implementation category. Table 2 lists all parish churches by district and alphanumeric code. Table 3 groups the churches in each district according to their assigned urban-implementation category, making it possible to verify the quantitative counts against the individual cases. These data can be used by researchers in architecture, urban morphology, urban history, heritage studies, cartography, and religious studies. They can support comparative analyses of church-public-space relationships, incorporation into GIS environments, heritage inventories, studies of local centrality, and future reclassifications based on alternative criteria. The tables show that square/open-space relationships are the most frequent condition (56 of 132 churches), followed by street alignment (41), widening/atrium situations (22), camouflaged cases (8), and block interiors (5). The chamfer subcount records 7 cases, mainly in Eixample and Sant Martí. Ciutat Vella has the highest density, followed by Gràcia and Eixample. The lowest densities appear in Sants-Montjuïc, Les Corts, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, and Horta-Guinardó.

Steps to reproduce

The dataset was derived from a doctoral corpus of 132 Catholic parish churches located within the municipal boundaries of Barcelona. The source information was gathered through on-site visits, direct observation of the urban setting, current photographs, sketches, municipal and parish archives, bibliographic sources, site plans, and comparable redrawn plans. For this dataset, the 132 church enclaves were reorganized by Barcelona's ten official municipal districts and redrawn on district-scale maps. The maps were prepared in AutoCAD 2016 20.1 as DWG files and exported as PDF and JPG files. All ten maps were drawn at the same scale. Each church was represented with a Latin-cross symbol indicating its orientation, and the surrounding public space was highlighted with a thickened line. After the maps were produced, each church-public-space relationship was classified into one dominant urban-implementation category: street-aligned, widening/atrium, square/open space, block interior, or camouflaged. Chamfer conditions were recorded as an informative subcount. The resulting classifications were then summarized in three tables: a district-level quantitative summary, an index of churches by district and alphanumeric code, and a table grouping churches by district and urban category. Figure captions: Fig. 1, Ciutat Vella; Fig. 2, Eixample; Fig. 3, Sants-Montjuïc; Fig. 4, Les Corts; Fig. 5, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi; Fig. 6, Gràcia; Fig. 7, Horta-Guinardó; Fig. 8, Nou Barris; Fig. 9, Sant Andreu; Fig. 10, Sant Martí. Each figure is a district-scale plan highlighting the Catholic parish churches and their adjacent urban space. A Latin-cross symbol graphically indicates the orientation of each church, while the public space in the immediate surroundings is thickened to show its morphology. All ten maps are drawn at the same scale. Table captions: Table 1, district-level quantitative summary, including district area, number of parish churches, church density, and counts by urban-implementation category. Table 2, parish churches by district and alphanumeric code, listing the 132 churches included in the dataset. Table 3, parish churches by district and urban relationship category, linking each quantitative count to the individual churches assigned to that category. The chamfer condition is recorded as an informative subcount and does not add up as an independent category.

Institutions

• Universitat de Barcelona

  Catalonia, Barcelona

Categories

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