The beautiful fountain needed hidden plumbing

Before the park could perform beauty, it needed infrastructure. Josep Fontserè designed the Dipòsit de les Aigües in 1874 as part of the new park's water system, and construction followed in the 1870s. The enormous brick structure regulated water for the landscape and cascade. Today it belongs to Universitat Pompeu Fabra and has functioned as a library since 1999. That reuse is more than an architectural curiosity: it turns invisible park machinery into a public place for reading and study. Even from outside, the repetitive brick arches make the original engineering legible. The picturesque nineteenth-century park had a backstage, and the backstage became a university.