Màrius Quintana

Màrius Quintana graduated in architecture at the ETSAB (School of Architecture of Barcelona) in 1979, where he specialized in town-planning. Three years after, he became part of the team of architects of the Servei de Projectes Urbans of Barcelona s city council.

Besides, in 1986, Quintana became Santa & Cole s Urban Elements collection director. Santa & Cole S.L. had edited in 1983 his Lamparaalta. It was a streetlamp that he and Beth Galí had designed for the park Joan Miró in Barcelona, with the idea that its light would reflect on the palm trees of the park. This lamp received the Delta de Plata Prize in 1984.

In 1988, a new department of Barcelona s city council was set up, the Urban Elements Department. Quintana was at its head, and its main aim was to harmonize the city s urban furniture. The department undertook an operation of cleaning, clarity and organization that had a clear objective: turning urban elements into useful objects and not a physical and visual nuisance, by following unified and innovative criteria in their design. The new elements, created by the department s team or by competition, had a didactic simplicity that interferes little with the surrounding, with and easy and tested maintenance", and were also solid and resistant. Some of the elements created at that time are, for instance, the wide granite dropped kerbs that have turned the Rambla Cataluña into a pedestrian area, or the new flower and newspaper kiosks in Las Ramblas.

Quintana has also been part of the Council of the Municipal Institute for the Disabled People, and of the committee that advised the Olympic areas on town-planning and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces on suppressing architectural barriers. In 1992, Quintana set up his own professional studio of architecture, town-planning, urban spaces, urban furniture, and interior design. Since then, he has undertaken many projects for the Public administration throughout the province of Barcelona, including the remodelling of the Rambla and the Santa Ana square in Mataró (1993), of the Catalunya square in Sant Boi (1994), the Joaquim Xirau square in Ciutat Vella (1997) and the Bonanova square (2001). He has also worked on projects for the old districts of Sarrià (Barcelona, 1997) and Cerdanyola del Vallès (1998), the Rambla of Badalona (1997), ant the Ernest Lluch library in Vilassar de Mar and the Distrito 6 library in Terrassa (2002), among others. He has also made many shopping centers and houses all around Catalonia, has designed urban elements, and teaches at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).