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Today's visit

	A New Look at the Industrial Heritage of the Agbar Water Museum
	Sònia Hernández Almodóvar Head of Exhibitions at the Agbar Water Museum
	Halfway through the 20th century the steam hydraulic facility at the Agbar Museum stopped operating. In January 2009, 100 years after it was first started, one of the machines was brought back to life.
AGBAR Water Museum Sant Boi Road 4-6 08940 Cornellà de Llobregat Information and booking: 93 342 35 36 i 93 342 35 38 From 1998 the Agbar Foundation consolidates as the Agbar Group's tool to promote environmentally friendly actions. Thus, its foundational objectives were the following: - To conserve and protect the environment in all its aspects especially with regard to the integral water cycle as well as management and removal of all type of waste. - To promote activities of research, development and innovation within the field of environmental protection and improvement. - To create a documentation centre and archive in relation to its field of activity. - To watch over human living standards. These objectives are developed in a series of areas of activity: environment, technology	Starting up one of the steam engines in the electricity room is, probably, the outstanding event in a combination of actions aimed at giving visitors a new look at the museum’s industrial heritage. This was brought about by a team of experts in old machinery and current and retired Aigües de Barcelona employees, without whom this project would certainly never have got off the ground. The Agbar Museum, located in central Cornellà, is a drinking water extraction and pumping station for Barcelona and its metropolitan area that is still in operation today. Apart from starting up the above mentioned steam engine, we are creating a new interpretation space, a large museum directory in the form of a circular viewing platform from which visitors can identify the different elements in the museum and the pumping station. In the middle, a tactile model lights up in time with a speech about the facilities. An audiovisual presentation at the start of the route through the building’s interior gives visitors a glimpse of the pumping station’s history set in the context of Barcelona’s history, while the operation of each of the machines is explained through a variety of interactive systems. The museum’s heritage remains rooted in its historical and social context but, above all, in its most immediate industrial environment: that of a plant that has operated continuously since its opening and is now open to visitors.