Leftovers. A Relational Infrastructure
Major cities emerge in modern society as a determinant ground for largescale economies, an extended political terrain for global operations that shape the way we live and behave, the way we relate to each other, and the surrounding. In this context, urban renewal plans are one of these practical mechanisms of city reconfiguration. Regarding the specific case of the Poblenou’s district in Barcelona, the outcome of such procedures demonstrates all the contradictions and criticality of such largescale urban plan actions. In fact, between the 1980s–and 2000s, the area in question lost an essential part of its industrial heritage with socio-economical and cultural values degradation.
Fragmentation, disarticulation, disruption, exclusion, and inequity at multiple scales are leftovers of such processes, the ash of place consumption.
However, these processes are part of reality.
Therefore, how to confront this new postspeculation actuality, the incoming as-found of this context?
The research analyses this stratification of dynamics and attempts to promote a post-speculation approach of adaptability, consideration and inclusion.
The grid and the path
The intervention plot is located in the northern section of the San Marti district, namely the neighbourhood of Provencal de Poblenou, an urban conglomeration significantly enclosed by the road system: the Avinguda Diagonal street on the south and respectively, the Gran Via de les Cortes Catalanes and the Rambla de Prim on the north and the est. With a clear cut into the urban fabric, the city’s main artery, the Avinguda Diagonal, significantly segregates this part of the city, causing a complicated connection especially with southern section, the Poblenou former industrial district, nowadays core of the social, cultural and economic dynamism of the area. Today the neighbourhood of Provencal of Poblenou is part of the city’s most prominent building site on land, a redevelopment area of significant social deprivation, with a substantial lack of public equipment, services and infrastructure. For these reasons and a historical position at the second stage in economic and social interest compared to Poblenous centre, Provencal de Poblenou remained a section characterized by scarce social dynamism and difficult accessibility within the city.
In contrast to a large-scale design methodology, the strategy applied to this intervention follows a block by block design strategy to promote differentiation and mixed urban configurations. By providing the area with a condenser for urban activities, the proposal involves a peripheral territory of the district, a border, aiming to catalyze a more significant exchange, especially with Poblenou, the core of the old industrial settlement, along the historical path of the old street of the Pere IV.
On new urban spaces and integration of programmes in the specific case of Barcelona,
J. Busquets has pointed out the importance to take into account both the existing and the active social agents.
For this reason, the proposed program is based on considering previous conclusions by the ongoing public discussion in a frame of participatory urbanism.
In fact, as a counter-action to produce built environment starting from the most profitable urban typology, also dwelling or offices, by contrast, the project aims to offer a service connecting network of types of equipment, vegetation, area for sport, leisure, working and spaces for open and unplanned opportunities to encourage a favourable living condition.
At the urban level, the intervention works on the duality between saturation and desaturation and the concept of bland borders, involving three blocks of ca. 113 x 113 meters. Densification on the one hand and emptiness on the other, the configuration tries to establish a dialogue with an uncertain surrounding for which it wants to be a translator apparatus. Unity, densification, imagination is the driving grounds that define a conciliatory approach between languages: infrastructural and evocative, distinct and vague. Thus the intervention suggests three actions:
1_Insertion of low-rise vegetation for leisure purposes, as a “carpet” for relations.
2_A public building, a multipurpose open facility that provides equipment to the area.
3_An attached porch, a simple gesture, embracing a relationship with the surrounding buildings, the Leftovers.
Autonomy of Grids
The project’s configuration is shaped by a sequence of diverse grid configurations, as a series of infrastructures that permit aggregation on multiple stages and define an urban environment of components: steel columns, pillars, trees, lowrise vegetation. The aim is to define a combination of supporting rooms for both functioning as a single, independent entity or with each other. The juxtaposition over the existing urban structure, the isometric grid of the Cerda’s expansion, and the agricultural trace, the Pere IV street, create a continuity of space that operates as a translator tool. The grid’s scheme also supports elemental continuity between indoor and outdoor schemes encouraging accessibility and flexibility of uses. Exemption of the grid constraints is possible. In fact, as a fundamental structural ordering tool, the grids define a rhythmic vertical sequence, a characteristic presence into the space, which guides the spatial experience of the site but also encourages contamination of new spaces.
Malleability of Structures
We live in a time of quick changes, in which human uses and habits may vary from one day to another. Therefore, the adaptability of spaces is a crucial factor for resilient planning. The structural roofing layout of the project seeks to merge a pragmatic scheme with the heterogeneity of structures. in the visualization, one of the volumes is characterized by a saw-tooth roofing, an industrial typology that permits a convenient illumination for indoor spaces related to the working-making related activities. A lightweight insulating concrete deck is supported by a system of composite steel joist truss on castellated steel beams. This layered structural frame allows achieving two spans of 7.5 meters and 15 meters to permit a multi-use approach to the space. Here the steel castellated beam and the joist truss offer room to experience the space within the structure: they function has a tridimensional supporting grid for unplanned uses.
