Rethinking Barcelona

“Shifting Limits” looks at creating new continuous territories by removing existing city boundaries (neighborhoods, socioeconomic divides, broad avenues) through an architectural strategy of continuity, connectivity, and porosity.

Our approach started by planting initial “seed blocks” into Barcelona’s already dense and defined fabric, allowing for new territories to emerge while the centers of existing neighborhoods shift. The “seed block”, a corner condition that can only grow in two directions, stitches adjacent blocks together--condensing the urban block through physical continuity yet porosifying through circulation. This new, compressed connection inverts conventional boundaries of living (interior) and urban (exterior) programs (within the existing block and above it) and the overall hierarchical reading of edges-- the figure-ground reading of Barcelona transforms into gray edge territories. 

At the urban scale, it straddles in between Cerda’s classical ideals of continuity and the contemporary needs for urban density and lightness. At the block size, it straddles in between public street life and Barcelona’s hidden courtyards. The inversion of edges at the programmatic scale further blends interior life with the public courtyard and city with the neighborhood.

Role: Codesigned and written by Tammy LePham.
Instructor Brian Price; Fall 2012. California College of the Arts