Barcelona Rocks: an App to discover the world of Geology around the city

BCN Rocks is a new app for smart phones which enables discovering the city of Barcelona from a new scientific and cultural perspective.
BCN Rocks is a new app for smart phones which enables discovering the city of Barcelona from a new scientific and cultural perspective.
Research
(03/11/2016)

It is widely known that Casa Milà -most known as La Pedrera- is a building with an outstanding architectural beauty, built by Antoni Gaudí and appointed UNESCO World Heritage in 1984. What it is not that known is that La Pedrera has a façade made of micrite limestone of a light sub-crystalline texture, and it was built with rocks coming from Vilafranca del Penedès, Garraf and Ulldecona. The pavement in the Barcelona City Council, for example, is made of porous travertine limestone, while the façade of the Historical Building of the University of Barcelona is dressed with stone from Montjuïc, a quartzite sandstone from the late Miocene highly resistant to erosion and used widely in construction.

BCN Rocks is a new app for smart phones which enables discovering the city of Barcelona from a new scientific and cultural perspective.
BCN Rocks is a new app for smart phones which enables discovering the city of Barcelona from a new scientific and cultural perspective.
Research
03/11/2016

It is widely known that Casa Milà -most known as La Pedrera- is a building with an outstanding architectural beauty, built by Antoni Gaudí and appointed UNESCO World Heritage in 1984. What it is not that known is that La Pedrera has a façade made of micrite limestone of a light sub-crystalline texture, and it was built with rocks coming from Vilafranca del Penedès, Garraf and Ulldecona. The pavement in the Barcelona City Council, for example, is made of porous travertine limestone, while the façade of the Historical Building of the University of Barcelona is dressed with stone from Montjuïc, a quartzite sandstone from the late Miocene highly resistant to erosion and used widely in construction.

 

Discovering the types of rocks from the façades and pavements in the city and combining interest in geology, architecture and history are the main aims of the App BCN Rocks, an app for smart phones which enables discovering Barcelona from a new scientific and cultural perspective. The App BCN Rocks is a new educational proposal based on new uses of urban territory and it is driven by the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona and the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera of the Spanish Scientific Research Council (ICTJA-CSIC), with the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) - Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO).

 

BCN Rocks: the city as a place for geological discoveries

 

This new app, aimed at young students and general public, allows discovering Barcelona through the eyes of Geology. Without having to get inside the buildings, the new app provides with the identification of geological material (type, genesis, etc.) for façades and pavements of some of the most emblematic buildings, and it points up the knowledge of architectonical history of the city through its main historical stages, from the Roman Barcino to present-day.

 

BCN Rocks shows the importance and incidence of Geology around us, and it uses urban habitat as an active school for geology knowledge, far from the most static visions on the teaching of scientific disciplines. Throughout the data related to the rocks of façades and pavements of our surroundings, the app wants to bring the world of Geology closer to all users while they explore its content and play with its games and routes.

 

A route for Geology from Passeig de Gràcia to the Gothic Quarter

 

BCN Rocks, presented in several scientific and education conferences over 2016, has reached an initial development stage with selected routes around the center of Barcelona (Passeig de Gràcia, Plaça Catalunya and the Gothic Quarter), with emblematic buildings with great historical projection such as Palau Robert, Pedrera, Barcelona City Council, Palau de la Generalitat or the Historical Building of Barcelona.

 

This initiative, adaptable to other districts and cities, is a science and culture dissemination platform for society, which brings culture and innovation to promote the critical spirit, understanding of the scientific method and the social interest in science, technology and innovation as a basis for its progress.

 

The App BCN Rocks, created with the participation of the company FUSTA, is available in Catalan, Spanish and English, and people can access from the different official distribution points of the two proposed platforms (GooglePlay and AppStore).

 

More information here: 

 

IOS: https://itunes.apple.com/es/app/bcn-rocks/id1090824521?mt=8

 

Google Play:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.ub.bcnrocks&hl=es_419