Forms for Living. Politics of collective housing in Cerdà’s Barcelona Block
AA 2020-21 : https://pr2021.aaschool.ac.uk/programmes/experimental-8
Designed to disseminate an even distribution of blocks across a potentially homogeneous and infinite city territory, Ildefons Cerdà grid for Barcelona is the epitome of modern urbanisation, but also the perfect tool for global investment corporations recently. Dominated by circulation and biopolitical codes to accommodate the living into defined private properties, this grid, which was conceived as an open field accessible to all citizens, is now trapped by its own predisposition to capital surplus investment in housing property. Today, market investors are increasingly dominating Real Estate preventing citizens, and especially, the younger generations, to access housing. As post-COVID economic deacceleration will worsen this situation, it urges to think about alternative models for living such as co-opt, self-built and resilient residences. To explore these alternatives, EXP 8 proposes work on one of the 113,3 x113,3 metres Barcelona blocks where to speculate with new forms for living for the coming generations.
Along this year, the unit investigated form in a twofold way: as social structures able to survive in the changing condition of the contemporary city through networks of shared interests, associations, cooperation, and care; and as pre-set urban artifacts that can articulate these relations in significant ways. In addition, understood as design processes for urban consolidation and densification against the endless expansion of the city, these forms for living were inserted, infiltrated, and added to the existing grid. The unitwas also interested in processes and actions that provide trust and agency to inhabitants in decisions on housing planning, additional programming possibilities and construction processes, what includes architecture’s own materialisation. Investigations on local material -ceramics, wood, clay-, sustainable possibilities of construction and creative explorations of traditional crafts aligned to experiences in the Mediterranean culture, will be considered to foster sensorial gratification and social engagement.
Students: Mia Aoun, Maria Alejandra Bigott Picasso, Diana Dulina, Daphne Esin, Banu
Gaffari, Michal Klonecki, Sara Khalil Layoun, Lucia Martinez-Botas Herrera, Natalia Miskelly, Anastasia Papaspyrou, Asli Sezer, Tatiana Suzanne Watrelot, Guinevere Winesa and Ghita Zahid.