Course: Description of the Course
Aims and Contents
The main issue in this project is integration: physical integration of the area in its environment, and social integration of the migrants who will establish here temporarily or permanently. To vehicle the integration of this nowadays somehow isolated piece of town and of very diverse groups of people who have in common that they are strangers at the place, a mixed-use program is proposed.
The majority of migrants that come to Spain from outside Europe and in poverty conditions arrive from Africa, mostly crossing illegally to the Canary Islands, through the Straight of Gibraltar, or jumping the wall that surrounds the Spanish colonial towns in Morocco. Behind many of them is a long voyage through several African countries (often “sponsored” by their families or their origin villages). Human-smuggle organizations have taken all their money. Usually they arrive in bad health conditions, but as most of them are young they recover relatively quickly. As for many the goal is Europe without distinctions, they decide to stay in Spain. The majority are male singles, whose original aim is to stay for some years earning money and then go back to their home countries. In Spain we find much more economical than political immigrants. A specific collective are the (male) teenagers, that arrive without identification to stay as long as possible: until they are eighteen they can not be expelled and Spanish Social Services have to take care of them. Economical immigrants who enter Spain legally compose the other big group. They come mostly from South America and Morocco. Within them you find much more couples or families. Or if coming alone, their goal is to bring their acquaintance later on. From South America come more women than men, while from Morocco, if not families, men alone. The first pursue social jobs, the second jobs in agriculture and industry. Immigrants coming from Asia (Pakistanis: men+families, Chinese: families, Philippines: women) are also within this collective.
The site is meant to provide a first shelter for immigrants; to host them while they get their residence permit, while they search for employment. There they shall get help to know the basics of the local way of living, to adapt to other logics and
routines, to learn the language(s). From the very beginning they shall get the chance (and the obligation) to have regular and steady contact with the locals.
To do so several vehicles are proposed. Working together will tie human relations and restore self-esteem. Children schooling is a first step to integration. And sharing celebrations and other (leisure) occupations for sure will also help. The common activities will work in both directions: Immigrants will become familiar with the local customs, and locals will learn about other ways of doing, being trained in open mindedness and tolerance. Different spaces to host these activities have to be developed: “camp” administration and social centre, orchards and canteen, language school and kindergarten, nursery and primary school, retail shops and co-working centre, Art-Artisan production centre and fab-lab, international library and ecumenical church. The aim is that the specificity of the area works as a magnet within town. The canteen is not only to provide the migrants food, but also to permit them and the local neighbours to offer selfcooked dishes that use the orchard production to the rest of town. The kindergarten does not only mix the children, but also the teachers: it is a way to integrate mostly female immigrants, who usually are more familiar with social tasks and by collaborating gain respect and visibility. Shops are thought both as places to buy and to sell; open spaces should encourage shared leisure, for example sport activities, etc. etc
While these facilities will have a medium term life, housing will undergo stronger changes. The residential proposal should contain the possibility and potentiality of adaptation and development. The request is not a transit camp, but the project of an area where the new arrivals, under certain conditions, can stay. That means on one hand to foresee growing density (thirty years to be consolidated) by an adjustable masterplan and on the other changing migrants’ social/family structure by adaptable housing units. To encourage integration, housing is also offered to different local collectives, included students and elderly (sheltered housing). The final proportion of immigrants and locals living in the area should be more or less one third and two thirds.
The projects should reflect on the initial status and the situation within thirty years.
The Site
Barcelona is a rectangular plane sloping gently down to the Mediterranean Sea at its southeast border. On the opposite northwest border the Collserola hill range protects it from the north winds. On both sides two rivers flank the area. On the sea border a hill falling steeply down into the water completes an advantageous topography, especially in military terms. The Roman conquerors choose this place to found a “supply station” on their way to inner Iberia. A busy little town developed, attached to the sea and with a fertile agricultural hinterland. By time it became commercial, as its central position within the West Mediterranean Sea converted it in a trade centre for agricultural and craft products. In the middle age it was prosperous, but the “discovery” of America shifted trade to the Atlantic. For strategic reasons Barcelona was not allowed to extend beyond its tight city walls. Only the little villages along the northwest border of the farmland grew slowly. 1850 an already pretty industrialized Barcelona trapped in its walls and nearly bursting, finally got permission to tear the walls down and urbanize the land between the city and the surrounding villages. This is the origin of the grid. Cerdà’s “ Plano del Ensanche de Barcelona” was going to cover a surface nine times the existing one, which can be seen as a proper town foundation. From the beginning a square pretended to become the centre of town, plaça de les Glòries, splits the grid in two parts. The eastern part, around the village of Poblenou, will become the industrial area of Barcelona. Since the Olympics in 92 this area is undergoing a huge change. “Dirty” industrial activity is no longer allowed, coincident with the general industrial delocalisation happening in Europe. The socalled 22@ area is being reconverted into an innovation district whose main activities are based on knowledge and new technologies. Universities and IT/Communication/Media -related enterprises/clusters/startups are colonizing the area. In parallel a mixture of public and private residential promotion is going on. And also the classical creative activities related to art &co are present and, like the others, take advantage of the remaining industrial heritage under protection. The site we are going to work on occupies an area of ca. 2 X 4 blocs. Traces of the layout previous to the grid appear between the unfinished grid infrastructures. More than half of the surface is occupied by operating warehouses that have to be kept and integrated in the design. Some historical fabrics remain or have been refurbished. Several residential buildings have been erected in the last years. And a small municipal orchard provides planting surface to whoever wants to grow his food. Both the free spaces and the borders of the area are messy and irregular. Shall we trace clear lines and limits or shall we intermingle our interventions with the existing erasing the seams? Which traces will guide the project: the ancient ones or the ones belonging to the grid? Or some others? Is it possible to foresee and “contain” a future scenario in a nowadays proposal? (How) can provisionality and “definitivity” coexist? What role does vegetation play in town? How shall we deal with heritage? This is only a little sample of a large amount of questions that will arise.