A week of seminars, lectures and presentations organised and hosted by Projective Cities MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design.
1-5 NOVEMBER 2021
After 2019 studio trip, this third (second virtual) edition will deepen in the understanding of the city’s current problems and challenges derived from both contextual matters and historic claims. Organized around a number of daily topics (Introduction, models and governance for affordable housing, resilience, urban subjectivities and designing Barcelona), local guests from different profiles and backgrounds will enable a number of discussions for which the understanding of multiple stakeholders’ approaches become fundamental.
Sessions:
Mon, NOV 1 Barcelona, a brief introduction. Raül Avilla | Zaida Muxí.
Tue, NOV 2 Arquitectos de Cabecera (Tonet Font) | Straddle 3 (David Juárez).
Wed, NOV 3 Arqbag (Bernat Colomé, Júlia Dubois) | La Dinamo Foundation (Daniela Idrovo) | Raons Publiques (Anna de Torróntegui, Andrés Martínez).
Thu, NOV 4 DPR Barcelona (Ethel Baraona) | Celobert (Diego Carrillo).
Fri, NOV 5 Vicente Guallard | MAIO Architects (Public Lecture, 7pm).
Note: hours in CET time zone (Barcelona local time).
Monday November 1: BARCELONA: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
11:00-12:30, Seminar: “Barcelona, Plans and Challenges” | Raül Avilla-Royo | Barcelona’s urban structure and architecture allows a transparent reading of the urban morphology as a result of different historical society structures, political strategies, power deployment forms and city struggles. From ancient roman times, through medieval city, industrial extension (Eixample) and implementation of modern ideas, each moment spatialized socio-political ideas in specific city patterns, while transforming previous ones at its convenience. Exemplified in Barcelona, this seminar will navigate through the relevant urban episodes that made the city of Barcelona, ending up in the 1992s’ so-called “Barcelona Model”, broadly exported, and as much celebrated as criticized. Lecturer: Raül Avilla.
12:30-14:00, Seminar: “Community Architecture” | Raül Avilla-Royo | The 2008 real estate bubble burst caused an unprecedented economic crisis, that soon turned into a social and political one. In 2011, the 15M Indignados (Outraged) movement became a spontaneous social movement that politicised society at all levels, producing significant changes in city governance, particularly after 2015 with the rise of the municipalist movement Barcelona in Common, whose members are former activists. This seminar will analyse how a young generation of architects assumed political commitment and social responsibility as their own agenda, shifting their disciplinary tools and protocols, and becoming mediators between administration, technicians and social movements. Closely linked, it will address the new scenario produced by the emergence of cooperative housing and a number of self-managed community facilities. Lecturer: Raül Avilla.
16:00-17:00, Zaida Muxí | Zaida is an Architect by the University of Buenos Aires and obtained her PhD from the School of Architecture of the University of Seville. She had been Director of Urban Planning, Housing, Public Space, Ecology and Environment in Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Catalonia.Spain). She is professor of Urban Planning at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB) at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona. Former co-director with Josep Maria Montaner of the Master of the XXIst century Sustainable Housing Lab from 2004 till 2014. Formerly Deputy Director of ETSAB (2009-2012). Her last book is “Beyond the Threshold. Women, Houses and Cities” (dpr-barcelona, 2021). She is co-founder and member of research network “Un dia una arquitecta” (undiaunaarquitecta.wordpress.com) and was co-founder and member (till 2015) of Col·lectiu Punt 6, a group of women that advocate for and conduct research on gender inclusive planning (punt6.wordpress.com ).
Tuesday Nov 2
11:00-12:00, Arquitectos de Cabecera | Tonet Font | Architect and urban planner. He teaches at the ETSAB and at the URL schools of architecture of Barcelona. Since 2001 his work has been dedicated to social housing, urban regeneration and local development. Previously responsible for the Pla de Barris (Neighbourhoods Plan) in Barcelona and in charge of Social Innovation as an advisor to the mayor’s office. He is a member of Arquitectos de Cabecera (Community Architects association), a Barcelona-based collective that inquiries in community-led city urban processes through architecture pedagogy as a tool for social transformation. Focusing on collective housing and collaborative practices, AC addresses the existing city by questioning the role of architecture amid an economic, social and disciplinary crisis. AC has been recognized nationally and internationally, including the City of Barcelona Architecture Award in 2015, 2017 nomination to Mies van der Rohe awards, and a commendation in the 2021 Innovation in Architectural Education Award by the International Union of Architects. AC was exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion of the 2018 Biennale of Architecture in Venice and in Piso Piloto Exhibition in Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona (CCCB) and Museo de Antioquia de Medellín in 2015. www.arquitectosdecabecera.org.
12:30-13:30, Straddle 3 | David Juarez. Author | Architect and founding member of Straddle3. Since the late 1990s has developed citizen participation projects on the recovery of abandoned or obsolete industrial and cultural facilities, collaborative transformations of public spaces and focused on research and development in the field of social housing. He has given lectures, courses and workshops in universities throughout Europe and America. He has promoted and co-designed different open-source digital tools for projects related to participatory urbanism, in addition to participating in several specialized publications. He is a founding member of the ATRI collective and the international networks Arquitecturas Colectivas (southern Europe & Latin America) and CitizensLab (Europe). www. straddle3.net, www.atri.city, arquitecturascolectivas.net.
Wednesday Nov 3
11:00-12:00, Arqbag | Bernat Colomé i la Júlia Dubois | Arqbag is a young architecture studio that began its activity in 2013, and was formalized as a non-profit cooperative in 2017. It promotes new models of relationship between people, habitability and the territory. We understand architecture as an open process, in constant change, that identifies an architecture with low environmental impact, through the management of environmental and material resources, and participation. We highlight and value the process and not just the result. This process is based on detecting indicators, collecting data, generating content, parameterizing and socializing the goals, to propose strategies based on an objective, transversal and collective vision. From the beginning we have maintained a strong bond with the university (ETSAV – UPC), establishing our workspace on the same campus where we were trained. www. arqbag.coop.
12:30-13:30, La Dinamo Foundation | Daniela Idrovo | Dinamo is a foundation born with the aim of encouraging and promoting the implementation of the cooperative housing model ‘in transfer of use’ as an alternative to conventional housing model. We want to become a support tool for those initiatives that contribute in some way to the extension of cooperative housing projects, and collaborate with them to make possible the replication of experiences in the territory. We work to make turn the model into a reference in the field of the social and solidarity economy, contributing to the generation of autonomous and self-sufficient cooperatives. We encouraging intercooperation and promote networking in order to collectively build an alternative model of non-speculative, inclusive and sustainable housing and collective ownership. http://ladinamofundacio.org.
17:30-18:30, Raons Publiques | Anna de Torróntegui + Andrés Martínez | Raons is an urban social innovation project started in 2009. From the beginning, Raons has sought to create a co-operative start-up project with social enterprise values, which allows them to offer quality services to think, build and/or transform collectively the environments in which we live, work and enjoy ourselves. Raons team is the key element that has enabled the cooperative to get where it is today and continue projecting it into the future. It is made up of professionals from various disciplines with long work experience in fields ranging from architecture, urban planning, sociology, www.raonspubliques.org
Thursday Nov 4
11:00-12:00, DPR Barcelona | Ethel Baraona | Critic, writer and curator. Critical observer of the real world. dpr-barcelona is an architectural research practice based in Barcelona, dealing with three main lines: publishing, criticism and curating. Their work explore how architecture as discipline reacts in the intersection with politics, technology, economy and social issues. Their publications, both digital and printed, transcend the boundaries of conventional publications, approaching to those which are probably the titles of architecture in the future, exploring the limits between printed matters and new media, transforming traditional publishing practice [as we know it] into a live exchange of knowledge. Their [net]work is a real hub linking several publications and actors on architecture and theory. www.dpr-barcelona.com.
12:30-13:30, Celobert | Diego Carrillo | Architect, ETSAB UPC (2003). International Studies in Vernacular Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, 2002. Master’s Degree in Urban and Territorial Development from the UPC 2005. AJAC VI Young Architects Award (2008) for the essay “Basic Materials for the Integral Habitat Project. Proposal for El Salvador, CA” published by the UPC, 2007. Between 2003 and 2005 he began his professional career at Pich-Aguilera Architects, in industrialization and ecology projects applied to multi-family housing. By those years he cofounded SostreCívic housing cooperatives, based on the danish Andel model. Between 2005 and 2010 he worked in Morocco on industrialized social housing projects and in housing and urban upgrading project management. Since 2010 he is a founding partner of the architecture and engineering cooperative Celobert, in which he has mainly dedicated himself to the development of cooperative housing projects, ecological, healthy and energetically efficient, both new construction and rehabilitation. www.celobert.coop.
Friday Nov 5
11:00-12:00, Vicente Guallard | Vicente Guallart is an architect from Barcelona who works in the development of projects for ecological cities and buildings across the globe with his company Guallart Architects. He has won numerous international competitions including Housing post-COVID in Xiong’an (2020), or Xianmi hu Master Plan in Shenzhen (2018). He was chief architect of the city of Barcelona (2011-15) leading major transformations in the city, which was named European Capital of Innovation in 2014. He was also founder of the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (2001) from where he currently works in the development of Biocities, from the Valldaura Labs center. He is the author of numerous books, such as “ The self-sufficient city”, “Geologics” and “Plans and Projects for Barcelona”. He has recently won a competition to make the tallest wooden dwelling building in Barcelona. www.guallart.com
19:00-20:30, MAIO Architects | MAIO is an architectural office based in Barcelona and New York that works on spatial systems which allow variation and change through time. MAIO’s projects embrace the ever-changing complexity of everyday-life while providing a resilient, compromised and clear architectural response. MAIO’s members combine professional activities with academic, research and editorial ones. They have been in charge of the magazine Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme (2011-16), and currently teach at Columbia GSAPP (New York), the Architectural Association (London), the Escola d’Arquitectura de Barcelona ETSAB/ETSAV, and Elisava – Escola de Disseny i Enginyeria. MAIO has lectured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Barbican Center, GSAPP-Columbia University, RIBA, UC Berkeley, Yale School of Architecture and Piet Zwart Institute among other places. MAIO’s work has been published in magazines such as Domus, AIT, Volume, Blueprint, A10 and Detail, and exhibited at the MOMA of New York, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Art Institute of Chicago and Storefront for Art and Architecture. Lately MAIO has participated at Venice Biennial 2016 in the Spanish Pavillion, awarded with the golden Lion, at Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015 & 2017 editions) and co-curated a Weekend Special at the Biennale di Venezia 2014 together with SPACE CAVIAR and DPR-Barcelona.
