So we’re here in Barcelona as part of the Master of Urban Design program at RMIT University
and this is the first of three studios that we do in Barcelona, the other in Vietnam,
Ho Chi Minh City and also Melbourne.
This studio here is working with local practitioners and industry connections to formulate a problem
around what the future of Barcelona will be, specifically relative to the industrial waterfront,
and that’s a program that we’ll also pick up in the other three cities so that there
can be a comparison around how the cities change relative to shifts in industry production,
manufacturing and the industrial areas of the city.
The ports are very different, the waterfronts are very different, the same sorts of issues
are being raised as economics and industry change as well as population especially Melbourne.
Barcelona has been a model for many cities.
Many cities still come to our city to see what we have been doing, how we have been
doing things here, and I guess that Barcelona is facing all the issues that have to do with
the definition of what an urban quality of life means.
So I think it’s interesting to know how we habit these cities that we visit and how
this new culture of tourism gets involved with the local culture.
The urban thinking in general; the issue of how to involve people in the urban design
process as a creative invitation; I think it will be a main issue for the next years.
There should be a re-built relationship between the people and the public space.
For me, collaboration in practice is important because we aren’t working for ourselves;
we work for public spaces and the collectivity.
The city is now thinking in an area of the port that may help to establish a new relationship
between the port and the city.
So basically both the port and the city traditionally grow separately, not looking at each other.
For me, the challenge is how to bring a more complex and multifunctional use to this harbour
area but above all, not losing its industrial and production character.
We believe a lot in this urbanism of small pieces that were used in that building before,
20, 30, 50 years ago, how they react to your new intervention, the new uses, so that this
makes a link, again in different levels of society and links your small project to a
whole neighbourhood very fast.
We talk a lot about sustainability nowadays.
I think sustainability starts by giving time to the reflection period that any project
needs.
The waterfront in Barcelona is a project that maybe will take some time to grow and to be
in the imagination of the Barcelonians.
One thing to me that is very particular, and I think it’s very important for international
collaboration- whether at a student or professional level- is how you react to the place, so how
you land in a place even if you are local, there’s plenty of places you don’t know,
and what kind of dialogue you establish with this place.