1.
Barcelona
–
Founded as a Roman city, in the Middle Ages Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. Barcelona has a cultural heritage and is today an important cultural centre. Particularly renowned are the works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean is located in Barcelona, the city is known for hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics as well as world-class conferences and expositions and also many international sport tournaments. It is a cultural and economic centre in southwestern Europe, 24th in the world. In 2008 it was the fourth most economically powerful city by GDP in the European Union, in 2012 Barcelona had a GDP of $170 billion, it is leading Spain in both employment rate and GDP per capita change. In 2009 the city was ranked Europes third and one of the worlds most successful as a city brand, since 2011 Barcelona has been a leading smart city in Europe. During the Middle Ages, the city was known as Barchinona, Barçalona, Barchelonaa. Internationally, Barcelonas name is abbreviated to Barça. However, this refers only to FC Barcelona, the football club. The common abbreviated form used by locals is Barna, another common abbreviation is BCN, which is also the IATA airport code of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport. The city is referred to as the Ciutat Comtal in Catalan. The origin of the earliest settlement at the site of present-day Barcelona is unclear, the ruins of an early settlement have been excavated in the El Raval neighbourhood, including different tombs and dwellings dating to earlier than 5000 BC. The founding of Barcelona is the subject of two different legends, the first attributes the founding of the city to the mythological Hercules. In about 15 BC, the Romans redrew the town as a castrum centred on the Mons Taber, under the Romans, it was a colony with the surname of Faventia, or, in full, Colonia Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barcino or Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino. It enjoyed immunity from imperial burdens, the city minted its own coins, some from the era of Galba survive. Some remaining fragments of the Roman walls have incorporated into the cathedral. The cathedral, also known as the Basilica La Seu, is said to have founded in 343
2.
Spain
–
By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
3.
Ricardo Bofill
–
Ricardo Bofill Leví is a Spanish architect, who, since 1963, continues to lead the international architectural and urban design practice Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Ricardo Bofill was born into a family of builders in 1939 in Barcelona and he studied at the Barcelona University School of Architecture and graduated from the School of Geneva. At the age of 17, Ricardo Bofill designed his first project, a home in Ibiza. Over fifty years later, Bofill still leads Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, Bofill was raised in a Catalan bourgeois family. His father, named Emilio Bofill, was a builder and developer, Bando Republican, and liberal, Ricardo’s mother, Maria Levi, was an Italian Jew who functioned as the matriarchal pillar of the family. During his adolescence, Ricardo Bofill studied at the Lycée Français de Barcelone and he spent much of his youth traveling throughout Spain, spending a significant amount of time in Andalusia where he discovered Spanish vernacular architecture. In 1957, he attended the Barcelona School of Architecture, while there, like many students of the time, he began developing strong Marxist ideals. During a demonstration, he was arrested and expelled from the university, Ricardo Bofill fled Barcelona in 1958 for Geneva, where he attended the Université de Beaux-Arts Genève to complete his education. In 1963, Ricardo Bofill joined his business, forming a multidisciplinary, multitalented team consisting of architects, engineers, planners, sociologist, writers. Bofill revived the characteristic craftsmanship of traditional Catalan architecture, later on, he began to deal with local urban-planning problems within the Spanish political and social level. The necessity to approach large- scale projects led Bofill’s team to conceive a ridged yet organic methodology based on the formation of elements in space. Such was developed in a manner with the project The City in Space. The factory lies directly next to Walden 7, in Sant Just Desvern, above the Cathedral lie Ricardo’s residence, green roofs and terraces. The entire complex was planted with gardens to create the effect of an oasis within the industrial area. The renovation project, which began in 1973, incorporates various architectural languages, Catalan Civic Gothic style, as a result of the economic crisis and the tense political situation in Spain, Ricardo began focusing elsewhere. In 1971, Ricardo formed a team in Paris, in response to the demands of various projects for the French “New Towns”. During this phase, Bofill introduced in his proposals symbolic elements directly related to the French monumental architecture, La Petite Cathédrale and La Maison d’Abraxas are examples of these inhabited monuments. In France, Ricardo Bofill’s name is associated with the project of Les Halles
4.
Catalonia
–
Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, located on the northeastern extremity of the Iberian Peninsula. It is designated as a nationality by its Statute of Autonomy, Catalonia consists of four provinces, Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. The capital and largest city is Barcelona, the second-most populated municipality in Spain, Catalonia comprises most of the territory of the former Principality of Catalonia. It is bordered by France and Andorra to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east, the official languages are Catalan, Spanish, and the Aranese dialect of Occitan. The eastern counties of these marches were united under the rule of the Frankish vassal the Count of Barcelona, in the later Middle Ages Catalan literature flourished. Between 1469 and 1516, the King of Aragon and the Queen of Castile married and ruled their kingdoms together, retaining all their distinct institutions, Courts, and constitutions. During the Franco-Spanish War, Catalonia revolted against a large and burdensome presence of the Royal army in its territory, within a brief period France took full control of Catalonia, at a high economic cost for Catalonia, until it was largely reconquered by the Spanish army. In the nineteenth century, Catalonia was severely affected by the Napoleonic, in the second half of the century Catalonia experienced industrialisation. As wealth from the industrial expansion grew, Catalonia saw a cultural renaissance coupled with incipient nationalism while several workers movements appeared. In 1914, the four Catalan provinces formed a Commonwealth, and with the return of democracy during the Second Spanish Republic, after the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship enacted repressive measures, abolishing Catalan institutions and banning the official use of the Catalan language again. Since the Spanish transition to democracy, Catalonia has regained some political and cultural autonomy and is now one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain, the origin of the name Catalunya is subject to diverse interpretations because of a lack of evidence. During the Middle Ages, Byzantine chroniclers claimed that Catalania derives from the medley of Goths with Alans. Other less plausible theories suggest, Catalunya derives from the land of castles, having evolved from the term castlà or castlan. This theory therefore suggests that the names Catalunya and Castile have a common root, the source is of Celtic origin, meaning chiefs of battle. Although the area is not known to have been occupied by Celts, the Lacetani, an Iberian tribe that lived in the area and whose name, due to the Roman influence, could have evolved by metathesis to Katelans and then Catalans. In English, Catalonia is pronounced /kætəˈloʊniə/, the native name, Catalunya, is pronounced in Central Catalan, the most widely spoken variety whose pronunciation is considered standard. The Spanish name is Cataluña, and the Aranese name is Catalonha, the first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia were at the beginning of the Middle Palaeolithic. From the next era, the Epipaleolithic or Mesolithic, important remains survive
5.
Generalitat de Catalunya
–
The Government of Catalonia or Generalitat de Catalunya is the institution under which the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain is politically organised. It consists of the Parliament of Catalonia, the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Generalitat had responsibility for an annual budget of €24 billion in 2006, rising to €33 billion in 2010. The Generalitat of Catalonia stems from the institution which ruled, in the name of the King of the Crown of Aragon. The first Catalan constitution is that of the Corts of Barcelona from 1283, another medieval precedent- the Diputació del General de Catalunya – which the 1931 legislators felt was appropriate for invoking as a legitimising base for contemporary self-government. Then, by the early 18th century, as the Nueva Planta decrees were passed in Spain, the president of the Generalitat at the time, Lluís Companys, was tortured and executed in October 1940 for the crime of military rebellion. Artur Mas, the leader of the Convergence and Union alliance, has been the president of the government since mid-December 2010. His party did not obtain a majority in the 2010 election. His election as president was enabled by support of the Socialists Party of Catalonia, on 18 June 2006, a reformed version was approved of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia and went into effect in August. The current president of the Generalitat is Carles Puigdemont, previous president Artur Mas was recently charged by the Spanish government for civil disobedience, after he organised and staged a referendum on independence in 2014. The autonomous government consists of the Executive Council, the President, some people wrongly apply this name only to the executive council, however, Generalitat de Catalunya is the system of Catalan autonomous government as a whole. The region has achieved a greater degree of autonomy since 1979. After Navarre and the Basque Country regions, Catalonia has the greatest level of self-government in Spain, the Generalitat holds exclusive and wide jurisdiction in various matters of culture, environment, communications, transportation, commerce, public safety and local governments. In many aspects relating to education, health and justice, the region shares jurisdiction with the Spanish government, with few exceptions, most of the justice system is administered by national judicial institutions. The fields of law that are subject to autonomous legislation have been codified in the Civil Code of Catalonia consisting of six books that have successively entered into force since 2003. As an autonomous community of Spain, Catalonia is not recognized as a state by any sovereign state. However, as Catalonia has progressively gained a degree of self-government in recent years. For the most part, these relationships are with the governments of other powerful entities such as Quebec or California. In addition, like most Spanish autonomous communities, Catalonia has permanent delegations before international organizations, altogether, Catalonia has well over 40 representative offices worldwide
6.
Postmodern architecture
–
The movement was given a doctrine by the architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in his 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore, in the late 1990s it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-classicism and deconstructivism. The architect and architectural historian Robert Venturi led the attack in 1966 in his book, Complexity, … I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties. … I like elements which are rather than pure, compromising rather than clean. … I am for messy vitality over obvious unity, … I prefer both-and to either-or, black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white. … An architecture of complexity and contradiction must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion, Venturis second book, Learning from Las Vegas, co-authored with his wife, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, further developed his argument against modernism. He urged architects take into consideration and to celebrate the architecture in a place. He argued that ornamental and decorative elements accommodate existing needs for variety, Rossi insisted that cities be rebuilt in ways that preserved their historical fabric and local traditions. Similar ideas were and projects were put forward at the Venice Biennale in 1980, the call for a post-modern style was joined by Christian de Portzamparc in France and Ricardo Bofill in Spain, and in Japan by Arata Isozaki. Robert Venturi was both a prominent theorist of postmodernism and an architect who buildings illustrated his ideas, after studying at the American Academy in Rome, he worked in the offices of the modernists Eero Saarinen Louis Kahn until 1958, and then became a professor architecture at Yale University. One of his first buildings was the Guild House in Philadelphia and these two houses became symbols of the postmodern movement. He went on to design, in the 1960s and 1970s, Michael Graves designed two of the most prominent buildings in the postmodern style, the Portland Building and the Denver Public Library. The building has since added to the National Register of Historic Places. The most famous work of architect Charles Moore is the Piazza dItalia in New Orleans, drawing upon the Spanish Revival architecture of the city hall, Moore designed the Beverly Hills Civic Center in a mixture of Spanish Revival, Art Deco and Post-Modern styles. It includes courtyards, colonnades, promenades, and buildings, with open and semi-enclosed spaces, stairways and balconies. Philip Johnson began his career as a pure modernist, in 1935 he co-authored the famous catalog of the Museum of Modern Art exposition on the International Style, and studied with Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at Harvard. His Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, inspired b a similar house by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became an icon of the modernist movement and he worked with Mies on another iconic modernist project, the Seagrams Building in New York City. However, his buildings in the 1970, such as IDS Center in Minneapolis and Pennzoil Place in Houston were massive, sober
7.
Angels in America
–
Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a 1993 play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. The work won awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play. The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS, certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings or deceased persons. The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors, initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect. The two parts of the play are separately presentable and entitled Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, respectively, the play has been made into a television miniseries, and an opera by Peter Eötvös. Set in New York City in 1985, the opens with Louis Ironson. As Priors illness progresses, Louis becomes unable to cope and moves out, Prior begins to receive visits from a pair of ghosts who claim to be his own ancestors, and hears an angelic voice telling him to prepare for her arrival. Prior does not know if these visitations are caused by a breakdown or if they are real. Joe hesitates to accept out of concern for his agoraphobic wife Harper, Harper suspects that Joe does not love her, which is confirmed when Joe confesses his homosexuality. Harper retreats into a drug-fueled escapist fantasy, including a dream where she crosses paths with Prior even though the two of them have never met in the real world. Joes conservative mother Hannah arrives in New York, where she finds that in reality Harper has been wandering the streets of the city while Joe begins an affair with Louis, denying her sons homosexuality, Hannah instead tries to force a reconciliation between Harper and Joe. Connecting all these characters is Roy Cohn, himself deeply closeted, Cohn uses his political connections to secure a supply of an experimental drug, AZT, at the expense of withholding the drug from participants in a drug trial. Now alone in a hospital, Cohn finds himself judged by his night nurse Belize and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, whom Cohn had executed years before. At the end of Part One, Prior is visited by an angel, who proclaims Prior to be a prophet and tells him that the Great Work has begun. As the play continues, the angel reveals to Prior that Heaven is a city that resembles San Francisco. The progress of mankind on Earth caused Heaven to physically deteriorate, finally, on the day of the San Francisco earthquake, God abandoned Heaven. The angel brings Prior a message for mankind—stop moving. —in the belief that if man ceases to progress, Prior confides this vision to Belize, but Belize believes that Prior is projecting his own fears of abandonment into an elaborate hallucination. Prior goes to a Mormon visitors center to research angels, where he meets Harper, the two recognize each other from their shared dream
8.
Tony Kushner
–
Anthony Robert Tony Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America and he co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film Munich, and he wrote the screenplay for the 2012 film Lincoln. Both movies were critically acclaimed, and he received Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, for his work, he received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner was born in Manhattan, New York, the son of Sylvia, a bassoonist, and William David Kushner and his family is Jewish, descended from immigrants from Russia/Poland. Shortly after his birth, Kushners parents moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, during high school Kushner was active in policy debate. In 1974, Kushner moved to New York to begin his college education at Columbia University. He attended the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, graduating in 1984, Kushners best known work is Angels in America, a seven-hour epic about the AIDS epidemic in Reagan-era New York, which was later adapted into an HBO miniseries for which Kushner wrote the screenplay. His other plays include Hydriotaphia, Slavs, thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, A Bright Room Called Day, Homebody/Kabul, and the book for the musical Caroline, or Change. His new translation of Bertolt Brechts Mother Courage and Her Children was performed at the Delacorte Theater in the summer of 2006, starring Meryl Streep, Kushner has also adapted Brechts The Good Person of Szechwan, Corneilles The Illusion, and S. Anskys play The Dybbuk. In the early 2000s, Kushner began writing for film and his co-written screenplay Munich was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg in 2005. In January 2006, a feature about Kushner entitled Wrestling With Angels debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was directed by Freida Lee Mock, in a 2015 interview actress/producer Viola Davis revealed she had hired him to write an as yet untitled biopic about the life of Barbara Jordan that she planned to star in. In 2016, Kushner worked on August Wilsons screenplay for Fences, scheduled for release in December 2016, the film is directed by Denzel Washington. Kushner is famous for frequent revisions and years-long gestations of his plays, both Angels in America, Perestroika and Homebody/Kabul were significantly revised even after they were first published. Kushner has admitted that the script version of Angels in America. His newest completed work, the play The Intelligent Homosexuals Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, said work finally opened on May 15,2009. The Zionist Organization of America unsuccessfully lobbied the university to rescind its invitation to Kushner, during the controversy, quotes critical of Zionism and Israel made by Kushner were circulated. Kushner said at the time that his quotes were grossly mischaracterized, in an interview with the Jewish Independent, Kushner commented, I want the state of Israel to continue to exist
9.
Royal National Theatre
–
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdoms three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. Internationally, it is known as the National Theatre of Great Britain, from its foundation in 1963 until 1976, the company was based at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. The current building is located next to the Thames in the South Bank area of central London, in addition to performances at the National Theatre building, the National Theatre company tours productions at theatres across the United Kingdom. Since 1988, the theatre has been permitted to call itself the Royal National Theatre, the theatre presents a varied programme, including Shakespeare and other international classic drama, and new plays by contemporary playwrights. Each auditorium in the theatre can run up to three shows in repertoire, thus widening the number of plays which can be put on during any one season. In June 2009, the theatre began National Theatre Live, a programme of simulcasts of live productions to cinemas, first in the United Kingdom, the programme began with a production of Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren, which was screened live in 70 cinemas across the UK. NT Live productions have since been broadcast to over 1,000 venues in 35 countries around the world, the NT had an annual turnover of approximately £87 million in 2012–13, of which earned income made up 80%. Support from Arts Council England provided 20% of income, and the remaining 7% came from a mixture of companies, individuals, trusts, in 1847, a critic using the pseudonym Dramaticus published a pamphlet describing the parlous state of British theatre. Production of serious plays was restricted to the patent theatres, at the same time, there was a burgeoning theatre sector featuring a diet of low melodrama and musical burlesque, but critics described British theatre as driven by commercialism and a star system. There was a demand to commemorate serious theatre, with the Shakespeare Committee purchasing the playwrights birthplace for the nation demonstrating a recognition of the importance of serious drama, the following year saw more pamphlets on a demand for a National Theatre from London publisher Effingham William Wilson. The situation continued, with a renewed call every decade for a National Theatre, attention was aroused in 1879 when the Comédie-Française took a residency at the Gaiety Theatre, described in The Times as representing the highest aristocracy of the theatre. This still left the capital without a national theatre and this work was interrupted by World War I. The play was part of the campaign to build a National Theatre. Still, the Government tried to apply unacceptable conditions to save money, attempting to force the amalgamation of the publicly supported companies. In July 1962, with agreements reached, a board was set up to supervise construction. The National Theatre Company opened on 22 October 1963 with Hamlet, the current building was designed by architects Sir Denys Lasdun and Peter Softley and structural engineers Flint & Neill and contains three stages, which opened individually between 1976 and 1977. The construction work was carried out by Sir Robert McAlpine, the Company was to remain at the Old Vic until 1977, when construction of the Olivier was complete. The National Theatre building houses three separate auditoria, additionally, a temporary structure was added in April 2013 and closed in May 2016
