Latina

Biography

Beth Galí studied industrial architecture at the EINA school and obtained her degree in architecture from the Barcelona Higher Technical School of Architecture (ETSAB). A renowned designer, architect and landscaper, she was a member of the group of architects known as the "80s Generation". She worked on the opening up of the city to the sea, on restoring and converting its historical centre into a pedestrianised area and on creating new public spaces and designed urban elements to make Barcelona a city of international reference. She was involved in the FAD (Association for the Promotion of Art and Design), holding the position of vice chairwoman for the ADI-FAD (1976-1979) and was subsequently chairwoman of the FAD (2005-2009). Beth Galí has received various awards which include two Delta de Oros (1966-69) and a Delta de Plata from the ADI FAD for the LamparaAlta streetlamp (1984), the Dutch National Prize of Urbanism (1999), a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government (2003) and the Creu de Sant Jordi awarded by the Catalan Regional Government (2005). Her career as a designer started in 1966 with the design of stackable plastic wastepaper bins for TECMO, awarded the ADI-FAD Delta de Oro and three years later she received another ADI-FAD Delta de Oro together with Gemma Bernal and Ramón Isern for a telephone-style shower head. Some years later she worked as editor for JANUS, a magazine on new and old architecture. From 1982 to 1988, Beth Galí worked as a municipal architect for the Urban Projects Department of the City Council of Barcelona, and from 1988 to 1992, Beth was sub-director of the Municipal Institute for the Promotion of Town Planning and the Olympic Games (IMPU’92), responsible for the works of the Olympic areas of Montjuïc, Diagonal and Vall d’Hebron. Her works during that time included Parque Joan Miró (1982-89), the monument to Lluís Companys in Fosar de la Pedrera (1984-86), the park and the Sot del Migdia (1988-92), the Joan Miró Library(1990), the façade and new entrance to the cemetery (1991-92) and the various new entrances to Montjuïc mountain (1991-92)projects include the project to remodel Patrick Street and Grand Parade in the city of Cork (Ireland, 1999), the historic district of Hertogenbosch in Holland (1993-1998), for which they designed the Bicilínea bike park (1996), that of Roermond, also in Holland, (1995-1998), and Dublin in Ireland (2002), and the port areas of Piet Smith in the Rotterdam port (Holland, 1996). In Spain they have executed numerous projects such as the Zafra park in Huelva (1994) and the bathroom area of the Fórum de Barcelona (2004). Beth Galí has worked intensely in the academic field in various countries, she was a Town Planning Laboratory professor at the Barcelona Higher Technical School of Architecture from 1994 to 2004 and guest professor at various universities, which notably include the Architecture School of Lausanne in Switzerland, Delft School in Holland and Harvard in the States. For her numerous national and international projects, she needed to design various elements for the urban space, both lighting and furniture elements, through a fruitful collaboration between Beth and the Urban Division of Santa & Cole, now Urbidermis. In 1983 she designed the LamparaAlta streetlamp (1984 ADI-FAD Delta de Plata) together with Màrius Quintana in honour of Alvar Aalto, a master of reflected light. In 1996, for one of her projects in Holland, she designed the Bicilínea bike park, in 1998, for Rotterdam port, she designed the Latina streetlamp, a plastic streetlamp of extraordinary beauty to light large spaces, and in the year 2000, the Sara streetlamp, for the flexible lighting of pavements and roads. Know more