Reflection 5/7

As our units work is based on a live project in Barcelona I found it extremely informative spending a month within the locality at the beginning of our work at the architectural scale. This design stay allowed us to engage with locals and then developed relationships with these individuals which I feel personally have added a layer of richness to our project work. Personally for me this has further developed my interest in community practitioner relationships and being able to witness it within a slightly different cultural context. Through engaging with the locals and particularly having conversations with those were ‘hosting’ us the Taula I felt we were able to discover an in-depth and possibly underwritten account of the area which I feel will be extremely informative in developing our design thesis. I believe that our resulting projects will be stronger and greater level of sensitivity to the local context given the fact that we have spent such an length of time being part of the local community.

On our first visit in September our first impressions of the area was that it was largely abandoned. However the second stay enabled us to reflect on the first trip and realise that the area is actually teeming with life and there are so many interesting projects going on. If we had just spent a week there for our second stay I do not believe we would have come back with the same conclusions.

As well as working on our design thesis we were able to spend time understanding the slightly different cultural contexts that architects and practitioners work within Spain. Particularly as we are in the final year of Masters I think this is extremely important in demonstrating to us how different practitioners work within different countries.