A historical study of Barcelona’s construction sector

Date: Tuesday, 25 November 2025 – 5.30 to 7.15pm

Room MG38 (groundfloor, Marylebone Building), University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS

This is a hybrid event that will be held both in person and online. When registering, please indicate whether you plan to attend in person or virtually.

Additional instructions on how to join will be provided closer to the event date.

Adrià Velasco (University of Barcelona)

Discussant: Tilo Amhoff (University of Brighton)

About this event:

The 19th century brought unprecedented growth to the city of Barcelona. The increase in the production of the built environment required a large workforce and the construction sector consequently underwent significant transformations. The new employment opportunities attracted a migrant population for whom construction offered a gateway into the urban economy and potential social mobility. However, historiography has rarely gone beyond architects and engineers to understand the characteristics of the construction sector and much remains unknown about the strategies of different trades (bricklayers, labourers, carpenters) to advance in an industry marked by economic fluctuations. Adrià seeks to explain the characteristics of Barcelona’s construction sector during the 19th century, including entrepreneurship, self-employment—often amounting to self-exploitation—and the development of skill, as well as business exploitation, a casual workforce, and the volatility of the sector, often resulting in downward mobility. The objective is to understand the circumstances and mechanisms shapingd the labour market and experiences of construction workers, as well as the strategies of social mobility that existed, their success or failure.

Refreshments will be served at the start and end of this event.

For further information, please email Fernando Duran-Palma F.Duranpalma@westminster.ac.uk

Please book your ticket before 4pm on Monday, 24 November 2025.

About the Speakers:

Adrià Velasco: Is a Phd Candidate at the University of Barcelona, member of Work, Institutions and Gender Research Centre and currently Visiting Scholar at WBS with the Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment. His doctoral dissertation explores the worlds of labour in Barcelona's 19th century building industry, from a social and economic history perspective. He focuses on bricklayers' daily life and social realities, along with their labour organization and family strategies, to better understand change and continuity during Catalan industrialization.

Dr Tilo Amhoff: Is Senior Lecturer in Architectural Humanities at the University of Brighton, where he leads the MRes Architectural Research. His research explores the social, economic, and political conditions of the social process of the production of architecture. He co-edited (with Gernot Weckherlin and Henrik Hilbi) Produktionsbedingungen der Architektur (2018) and (with Katie Lloyd Thomas and Nick Beech) Industries of Architecture (2015). Tilo Amhoff was Chair of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) between 2019-2024 and founder member of Netzwerk Architekturwissenschaft, where he also co-directed the Architecture and Building working group.

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The London section of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) organises regular seminars on important issues concerning industrial relations in the UK and internationally. The seminars provide an opportunity to air and discuss these in an open forum and consider their implications. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.

The Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE) is a University of Westminster cross-school research centre concerned with the critical study of the production of the built environment as a social, environmental, and historical process, what this means for labour, communities, cities and nature, and finding innovative ways to construct a just, inclusive and sustainable society. Its extension activities are open to all.