Joan Rubió i Bellver (24 April 1870 - 30 November 1952) was a Spanish Catalan

Catalan people

The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...

 architect famous for his contributions to the Catalan Modernist

Modernisme

Modernisme was a cultural movement associated with the search for Catalan national identity. It is often understood as an equivalent to a number of fin-de-siècle art movements, such as Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Secessionism, and Liberty style, and was active from roughly 1888 to 1911 Modernisme ...

movement. He was also the brother of the military engineer

Military engineer

In military science, engineering refers to the practice of designing, building, maintaining and dismantling military works, including offensive, defensive and logistical structures, to shape the physical operating environment in war...

 Marià Rubió i Bellver and uncle of the architect Nicolau Maria Rubió i Tudurí and the engineer Santiago Rubió i Tudurí.

Biography

Rubió was born at Reus

Reus

Reus is the capital of the comarca of Baix Camp, in the province of Tarragona, in Catalonia, Spain. The area has always been an important producer of wines and spirits, and gained continental importance at the time of the Phylloxera plague...

.

A keen disciple of Antoni Gaudí

Antoni Gaudí

Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.Much of Gaudí's work was...

, he collaborated with until 1905, on such works as La Sagrada Familia, the Casa Batlló

Casa Batlló

Casa Batlló is a building restored by Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol, built in the year 1877 and remodelled in the years 1904–1906; located at 43, Passeig de Gràcia , part of the Illa de la Discòrdia in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Spain...

, the Casa Calvet, the Torre Bellesguard, Parc Güell, the restoration of La Seu

La Seu

The Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma, more commonly referred to as La Seu, is a Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral located in Palma, Majorca, Spain, built on the site of a pre-existing Arab mosque. It is 121 metres long, 55 metres wide and its nave is 44 metres tall...

 (the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca

Palma de Mallorca

Palma is the major city and port on the island of Majorca and capital city of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain. The names Ciutat de Mallorca and Ciutat were used before the War of the Spanish Succession and are still used by people in Majorca. However, the official name...

), and the Colonia Güell, where Rubió built La Cooperativa with Francesc Berenguer in 1900. Other buildings include a diversity of private houses, such as the Ca l'Ordal (1894) and the Ca l'Espinal (1900). When designing houses the architect had a prevalence for window boxes on the corners of his designs.

Rubió was also regidor

Regidor

A Regidor is a member of a council of municipalities in Spain and Latin America. Portugal also used to have the same office of Regedor.-Mexico:...

(governor) of the Ajuntament de Barcelona (1905) and the architect of La Diputación (the building housing the Provincial Council of the city). His architecture is also prevalent in the Balearic Islands

Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...

, for example in the northern town of Sóller

Sóller

Sóller is a town and municipality near the north west coast of Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands of Spain. The town is some 3km inland, from the Port de Sóller, in a large, bowl-shaped valley that also includes the village of Fornalutx and the hamlets of Biniaraix and Binibassi. The combined...

, where he designed the façade

Facade

A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

 of the church of Sant Bartomeu (1904) as well as the Banco de Sóller (1912), remarkable for its intricate iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

work.