|
I
am an architect and a landscape architect, I do building projects and I
even design furniture, but as I think it is crucial for our cities, I will
only center my explanation on equipped public spaces.
I am going to explain the transformation of a conglomeration of neighbourhoods in the northweastern area of Barcelona through the construction of public realm (plazas, streets, squares). The city is formed by the built fabric and by open spaces, by the interrelation of solid and void. The sense of community, of interrelationship, is based on the interweaving of these two domains, the private and the public. From
my point of view, in a dense city like Beirut, like Barcelona, with sea an
mountains, streets have to be for people, not highways, the squares should
be places, not only for representation but for gathering, and parks must
be a series of outdoor rooms,
not just an expression of greenery in order to scape of urbanity as the
anglosaxon park is. Transforming the urban realm in relation to the built fabric will enhance commercial activity and bring social life and interchange between communities
Projects
that consciously blurred the notion of indoor and outdoor proposing rooms
of a more ambiguous condition. Projects
that involve disciplines like urbanism and landscape as an integrated body
of architectural design. The
main principles of our practice have emerged from this background.
We have developed a strategy that approaches a specific design
problem in its broader site context, both in terms of ground and program. One
of our concerns is with the boundary between interior and exterior;
indoors and outdoors. We feel
that the demarcation of interior and exterior space has been too rigid in
the case of historical architecture, and perhaps too loose in the modern
project. These spaces must be
inter-related to the extent that they are made ambiguous. Therefore
we propose architecture that involves outdoor
rooms and indoor exteriors.
In this way, the question of ‘exterior’ and ‘interior’,
which is often tied to notions of public as opposed to private space is
re-stated. Is the public realm always outdoors?
Is private space necessarily indoors? Implicit
in our approach is that the qualities of interior and exterior spaces are
not always physically different, nor do they require different concepts of
function and use. Briefly,
Outdoor Room proposes a new
ground for architecture. It is a ground with less precise limits between
interior and exterior; between public and private.
A new ground that is more flexible and continuous; less
disciplinary. It is a ground
that might allow us to deal with new problems on new territories.
Plaça
Virrei Amat. Parc Central de Nou Barris: Cubist Landscapes Mediterranean
landscape is a land of strong sunlight and shadow, of steep topography
formed by terraced slopes and deep gullies which descent towards the sea.
It is also a landscape with an extraordinary pressure of mankind. The
presence of man has been a continuous fact from early times. Therefore it
is a landscape completely transformed by man. From urban settlements to
agricultural fields the presence of man is ever present and it makes
impossible to separate nature from artifice. However the fact that man’s
interaction has been continuous and extended through a very long span of
time linked to the slowness and gradualness of this process of
transformation provoke two major features: the indistinctness of man and
nature and the uniqueness of its landscape quality. In
Catalonian countryside we can find traces of this process all over. The
Romans imported the Pine trees that are inseparable of Costa Brava
landscape. Cypresses were planted as signs of hospitality or spirituality,
or as a wind barrier against north wind. Palm trees tell the story of
someone who gain his fortune in America and retired to his homeland.
Olives and vineyards are so rooted in the landscape that end up by losing
its agricultural character to become the essence of Mediterranean, the old
alliance of oil and wine. Mediterranean
mild climate has also two main consequences. The agricultural use of any
land and the byproduct of a controlled erosion or molding from natural to
artificial topography. And the special quality of its urban life very much
outdoor. This is a probably the main contribution to humankind: the
appearance of polis, the city.
And City understood in its broader meaning, as a place of relationship and
trade, of culture and commerce, briefly a place of human encounter. Much
of this landscape is conceptualize as the Cubist
landscape. The sum up of different view points and geometries as
cultivated fields, facades and tiled roofs, dry stone retaining walls, are
framed in a plane surface which is the painter’s canvas. Cezanne showed
partially this potential in the juxtapositions and color gradations of
Gardanne landscapes. Finally Picasso culminated Cubism manifesto in his
exulting paintings of urban/rural landscapes of Horta
de Sant Joan painted in the summer of 1909. Cubist landscape, by means
of formal abstraction, sums up the multiplicity of meaning and perceptions
of the place and creates a new reality. In
Cubism strategy of assigning similar values to man made and nature
exploring its formal qualities there is much of the same quality describe
in the Mediterranean landscape. Also, as anticipated by the pioneers of
Modern Movement, there is a strong potential to be applied in the
landscape, urban and architectural design.
The
Parc Central de Nou Barris and the Plaça Virrei Amat in the northern edge of
Barcelona were designed with the above as a tentative approach. The site is the
empty space left over by the massive construction of housing blocks during the
60' and 70' in a part of Barcelona which up to that moment was not more than
crop fields. Besides the size of the problem the dimension of the area could
hardly be seen because of the arrangement of the housing urban design. The
project attempts to suggest an-other
landscape that not only will propose a new urban park in the core of the dense
neighborhood but also will integrate the skyline and the massing of the housing
as an inseparable and essential part of the new landscape. The
main axis of Pi i Molist was transformed into a series of plazas that lead to
the district center. The central inner court of the building was opened at level
at the front and back sides of the open space. Several sparkling fountains with
water works singing catalan songs and series of lightning pergolas were
sporadically placed following pathways according topographic levels. We called
them ‘palmes i diapasons’, objectual trees related to wind and sound. People
call them ‘peinetas’ and they have become the symbol of Nou Barris, used as
graphic signs in posters of Fiesta Mayor or in Christmas time used as protection
shelters in the cribs of the schools and institutions of the area. Several
subterranean parking lots for the residents built under the park and the
adjacent main streets support the new open space. The old building is being
restored and a new public library already opened its doors. The Forum of
Technology was fit into the new topography and the pool enlarged and adapted to
a new entrance for the floating restaurant. Children playgrounds were placed as
well as picnic- and playing areas for the elder. Multiplicity of uses and
itineraries overlap during the day. Ordinary activity is at the highest in
weekends.
Next phase of the park is beginning to be built. The park jumps on the main transversal road and arrives at the traffic round about at the top where the foothill begins and the main traffic thoroughfare of the city crosses. New residential buildings are built to house the inhabitants of the area. An old brick aqueduct is adapted to the new landscape. Progressing to the top, sloped limits curve and colourful pavements melt into green. From the district core a continuous green space waves towards the hills. From the upper plaza the sea is seen downwards. Carmen
Fiol |
