Studio. Every architect's favorite word. Well, depending on the day and the person at least. It wouldn't be a REAL architecture study abroad experience with no design classes. Anyways, I am on my third week of school here at ETSAV and studio is in full swing. It's somewhat of a refreshing yet overwhelming experience all at the same time because it is something I have never done before - attempt to bring a community together through one architectural intervention. How does one attempt to unite a neighborhood that has been divided by the physical intervention of a concrete box enclosing a metro line? That is the question my Capstone studio is asking me to answer for the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona. We began our initial study of the area by visiting the neighborhood's "hotspot" - Can Vies. Since 1997, the building has been occupied by squatters who turned the 19th Century structure into a cultural center for the neighborhood. As a result of their illegal occupation of the building, the squatters were forcibly evicted by police in May of this year after plans to demolish Can Vies by the local government were finalized. Protests against the demolition broke out in Sants and other cities around Spain. The demolition was stopped and the squatters reclaimed Can Vies, vowing to rebuild. |
After visiting the site and talking to locals, my peers and I quickly discovered that the events concerning Can Vies were not the main focus of what was troubling the neighborhood. We turned our attention away from Can Vies and instead towards the train which runs right through Sants. A few years ago, the Barcelona public transport system decided to construct a box around the train to help control noise from the train for those living near the tracks. While it seemed like a logical solution, the concrete box is an eyesore for residents and created many unusable, "residual", spaces. These spaces can best be seen at Can Vies, where there is barely enough room to walk between the building and the box. Other areas along the metro line provide more space between the box and neighboring buildings. Over the next week and a half I'll be doing some investigation into whether or not these residual spaces can offer any sort of potential for my project.
Our studio professors have given us small group projects to really get us thinking outside of the box (literally) about the situation at Sants. Our first two projects focused on the impact of Can Vies, with one asking us to make a diagram about the Can Vies "phenomenon" and the other to make a short 3-5 minute video interviewing residents of Sants about the neighborhood. The third project was a food model (not to scale, thank god), which pressed us to describe information about the site in an unconventional way, and the fourth and final assignment was a collage, depicting our future intentions for our proposals. Trust me, when reading through these project prompts, I was very confused myself. I've been asked to do things that I've never done back in Champaign - I have never made a food model of a site, nor had to go out to interview people about social issues, not to mention in another language. However, it's pushing me to REALLY think about my project. Ok, that came out wrong. It's not that I don't already think about my projects, but normally we jump right into designing floor plans and programs without giving much consideration to what's going on at the site. We're typically given a program - build a house; build a library; etc - but for once, I get to decide where my project is going to be and what it is going to be. I'd say it's complete design freedom, but there are enough physical constraints to take into consideration, not to mention envisioning something that the people of Sants need/desire.
"Sants on a Plate" - One of our group projects asked us to make a food model of our site. The baguette is the concrete box; the lettuce is the "urban fabric"; the chips are noisy streets; popcorn shows the location of schools; the candy strings show circulation paths; and the glass is Can Vies. We called it the "social lubricant," so I'll let you guess what was in the glass... (Photo courtesy of Maya Krolikowski)
I am finally leaving the comfort of my group after presenting our final collage Wednesday, depicting what our intentions and strategies are for our projects going forward. It's exciting to know that the final project is finally starting, but at the same time I have no idea what I am going to do. The number of possibilities for what I can do is overwhelming. Now the challenge is to figure out which solution is the best for the neighborhood, and I have 2 weeks to figure out what awe-inspiring project proposal I'll come up with for my midterm on October 20th. It shouldn't be too hard - I just have to come up with a practical solution that will unite a neighborhood, no big deal. Looks like it's time to pull the trace paper off the shelf and get sketching.
--Jennifer
--Jennifer