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The reial acadèmia de ciències Naturals I Arts was created by a royal disposition of 1770 to give continuity to a Physical Conference that had been started in Barcelona in January of 1764. from 1779 it has had its headquarters in this same site of La Rambla, but the building that housed it did not acquire its current shape until in 1894 a deep remodelling designed by Domènech I Estapà in 1883 was completed.

It was one of the author's first projects and it is thus interesting to note in it how Domènech reaches the common objective of all the more active architects of his generation: the search of a new style. His creative effort is concentrated in the accent on the ornament elements, talking them out of and thus separating himself from the purely revivalist eclecticism, but -as Oriol Bohigas has observed- without deciding to take the definitive step of a stylistic change. The voluntary transgression of many of the compositional rules of the historical styles never goes beyond the simple decoration, although in this sense he later developed a personal decorative repertoire which was characterized by the excessive weight of the finials, the presence of low arches over lintels, arched and scaled gables, and, in general, the deformation and oversizing of elements.