What is it?

BIG TIME BCN is an interactive map of Barcelona that highlights the age of urban plots contrasted with the city's architectural heritage.

This dynamic cartography offers an insight into more than 2,000 years of history, nearly 70,000 plots and 3,000 protected monuments.

For the first time, complete information on Barcelona's heritage is available for citizens, professionals and tourists in a synthetic, open and flexible format.

Why BIG TIME BCN?

Even after buildings and walls are long gone, history remains. Sometimes the passing of time is very visible while sometimes it goes unnoticed. The city we have inherited from our ancestors is often diluted with new constructions at the same time as some contemporary buildings try to reference the old ones. Architecture builds the backdrop of our social space and is the scenery on which citizens forge society. The city becomes a space where our past memories coexist with the present moment.

Contemporay heritage is mutable: new assets come into sight while others disappear. Our memory depends on the images we can see and remember. That is why buildings that are forgotten, darkened by dust and pollution, can be lost forever.

This cartography traces the past on the face of modern Barcelona. It aims to explain the current image of the city, which has been shaped over thousands of years of collective conscience. We want people to discover and rediscover the city by making information about the urban environment accessible.

Who is it for?

BIG TIME BCN aims to be a tool for pleasure of those who love the city of Barcelona. It seeks also to become a reference platform for professionals and students that provides cadastral and heritage information in a novel and effective way.

The cartography represents a first attempt to include several existing databases and archives, most of them still to be digitized or opened. Big Time Bcn is useful for visualising information but also it melds different data sources into a single representation.

Data

We have collected, classified and displayed data from the Directorate General for Cadastre (DGC) and Barcelona Heritage Catalogue (CPAB). At present, information is available but it is difficult to use. We have created a new cartographical base map, which uses data from the DGC and the CPAB, adapting projection systems for a combined display of both datasets.

The Cadastre is an administrative record describing the land property and division. We compiled and displayed cadastral information of Barcelona according to the year of construction of each plot.

The Barcelona Heritage Catalogue is an inventory of architectonic assets, listed by heritage value. We have geolocated the assets depending on the level of protection (A, B or C), associating the catalogue details to its geographical position.

About

BIG TIME BCN is a project by 300.000 km/s (Pablo Martinez and Mar Santamaria) with Oriol Hostench.

App powered by InQBarna.

Linguistic assessor: Andrea Junker.

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