Reflection 1/7

Emma
Feb 24, 2016
2 min read

Our extended stay originated in a collective realisation that the community focused design our unit was promoting, was in direct contradiction with the isolated design process undertaken by designing ‘with the citizen’s best interests’ from the other side of Europe. We assumed, to a certain extent, the 12 weeks of group study from Wales, into Poblenou’s urban problems and our proposed development strategies would, due to geographical location, throw up contradictions with reality. I did not expect so many of our beliefs to be exposed as wrong during our month’s stay. Yet this situation taught me the most as it highlighted the common pitfalls, misassumptions, and the simplification of complicated urban networks which architects can make. Little things such as seeing an area, shops shut, shutters down, once on a Sunday afternoon and deciding the area was permanently void of life was dismissed immediately on our first Monday morning during normal trading times.

We first studied Poblenou through maps, articles, lectures, masterplans, and videos. Despite our initial diligent studying nothing could compare with the value of experience. On arriving in Poblenou we lived, explored, ate, walked, and socialised within the area. Walking to studio every morning suddenly made the road hierarchy system agreeable; the primary roads were not high speed motorways cutting up Poblenou into groups of 9 mananza blocks, as we first argued, but a method to provide separate cycle, bus, car and pedestrian routes. The ability for conversations with local residents, council officers, Taula members and local architects only aided this process. Experiencing Barcelona has given me insight into the urban dynamics and social systems in Poblenou, which I could not understand fully from Wales. What is now apparent is to really know an area, you need to know it from a citizen’s point of view, which brings us full circle to community focused design and the value in bottom up design approaches. Top down design, as we have now proved, often misses the mark.