M a s t e r s   D e s i g n   T h e s i s

Located within Barcelona’s post-industrial district of Poble Nou, this project addresses the scarred urban landscape of abandonment, upheaval and degradation left in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. Whilst thoroughly destructive, the crash brought to a halt previous failing urban management models and presented an opportunity for change and renewal within the urban context. It is this particular point of inflection that provides the spring-board for this design thesis, taking the opportunity to re-examine the foundations of urban living and explore innovative regeneration strategies that shift the focus away from the individual and towards the collective. Through investigation of the pre-proposed 22@ plan for the area, this design strategy considers new methodologies that translate spatially concepts of social cohesion, community, identity and collaboration with the aim of sparking revitalisation in both economic and governance systems that will prove not only resilient but socially responsive. 

 

At the urban scale, examination through social, economic and heritage lenses identified a number of urban clusters across Poble Nou that, when connected by nodal points of disused plots and urban voids, create a social network of permanent and temporary interventions that radiate throughout the neighbourhood, helping reknit the perforated urban fabric, restoring life back to the arterial Carrer de Pere IV.

 

At the master-planning scale, the scheme reshapes 22@ proposals by drawing on lessons from the 2006 Can Ricart conflict: namely the strength of the community when striving toward a common goal. By harnessing such stoicism, this proposal envisages public, private and community sectors collaborating to form a socio-economic enterprise that reignites the productive heritage of the site and reduces displacement of the local community. Success relies on the complicity of all members, each converging for different reasons to create an ecosystem that utilises the diversity of knowledge, skills and expertise of the individual for the benefit of the collective. The overall goal is the joint production of a product which competes in the market and raises revenue that can in turn be ploughed back into the system, facilitating growth, expansion and evolution as well as creating a focal point for diversity, communication and social congregation.

 

At the architectural scale, this project is focused on the social enterprise of a Bakery and Brewery:  building typologies that traditionally co-exist, due largely to their sharing of common resources. Located at the pivotal point of the site, the scheme links in with existing University proposals for the Minerva School of Social Economics, where students can directly interact with the adjacent social enterprise, providing a real-time case study for students and access to knowledge and resources for enterprise stakeholders. Building on key themes of production, [re]connection and exchange, the scheme exploits the production process as a facilitator for social cohesion, making visible the symbiotic relationship between person, process and place, and acts as a catalyst for social interaction, economic stimulation and veneration of heritage.