CaixaForum Barcelona

CaixaForum occupies the Casaramona factory, an early-20th-century textile mill designed by architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch — a contemporary and rival of Gaudí within the Modernisme movement — built between 1911 and 1913 with a distinctive fortress-like brick exterior featuring crenellations and turrets more associated with medieval architecture than industrial buildings, reflecting Puig i Cadafalch's own eclectic, historicist strand of Modernisme.

The factory operated for only a couple of decades before falling into decline, was later used as a police barracks, and sat largely disused for years before the la Caixa banking foundation restored and converted it into a cultural centre, opening in 2002. The renovation, overseen by architect Arata Isozaki, added a striking below-ground entrance plaza and glass canopy while preserving the industrial brick shell largely intact — one of Barcelona's more successful adaptive-reuse projects.