ETSAV: Studio 10 - Building on the Built

ETSAV, Barcelona: Design Studio 10, Selected Projects 2017-19

Tutors: Pere Buil with Santi Soto, Enric Granell, Josep Giner and Sergi Garriga

BOTB Pere Buil is an architect and co-founder of VORA, a practice based in Barcelona. The work of VORA is informed by an interest in the impact of traces and signs of the past on the built environment and on the collective identities of places. We’ve previously included VORA’s Vallirana 47 project in our Archive.

Since 2017 Buil has also led a design studio at Barcelona’s ETSAV (Higher Technical Architecture School of Vallès), a unit that is a collaboration between the Department of Architectural Design and the Department of Theory and History. Historically the studio has concerned itself with themes of pre-existence and memory and Buil has maintained this interest with the selection of projects that focus on re-use and transformation.

We present a selection of projects from ETSAV Design Studio 10, which is entitled, like us, ‘Building on the Built’.

PB Architecture is never designed for a neutral site, or so-called tabula rasa. There is always a pre-existence, whether it’s a tree, a landscape, or disordered suburb. A forgotten trace may re-emerge from a seemingly blank sheet.

Any pre-existing construction has material value and, as accumulated energy, a bearing on the ecological footprint of the projected construction. It is also a repository of accumulated memory, a witness to the knowledge bound up in a particular site or even the whole city.

On the other hand, the passage of time makes it necessary to transform places and built structures. Needs and uses are changing and constructions that have been useful in the past may not be useful for today’s needs. Individual buildings may now be at odds with situations that have changed around them.

The TAP (Architecture and Projects Studio) vs. PCG (Design-Composition-Graphics) Design Studio, or Design Studio 10 for short, focuses on projects which respond to pre-existing construction. The central theme of the studio is the permanent dichotomy between the value of reuse and the value of transforming, a difficult balance that requires both great sensitivity and daring on behalf of the students.

The collection of projects selected here are a record of the TAP X PCG Design Studio carried out during the 2017-18 and 2018-2019 academic years at the ETSAV. As well as myself, in these two years other teachers of the TAP have been Santi Soto, Enric Granell, Josep Giner and Sergi Garriga.

Click on the images to visit the project pages.

Neither Forgetfulness nor Forgiveness

The transformation of Barcelona’s La Model Prison; a project confronting the difficulties of adapting a highly specific building type, fraught with difficult memories and associations. A proposal by Clara Alsedà and Helena Rodríguez Soteras.

You Make Your Way on Foot

A proposal by Guille de Alfonso for the Castillo de Olèrdola, an Iberian archaeological site inhabited since the Neolithic era. A project that looks at how interventions can be made for interpreting a place and concerning memories with which the temporal link is broken.

Collision

The Moja Palace in Barcelona studied by Gonzalo Pérez Ara and Pol Bosch. A project which focuses on the collision between the contemporary need for transformation and a building which has been restored and renovated to such an extent that it can now only have a very limited role in the city today.

The Emperor's New Clothes

The SEAT building in Plaça Cerdà, in Barcelona; a project dealing with the contested heritage of the 20th century and on the balance between improving energy performance and the preservation and recovery of iconic buildings. A joint project by Beto Clotet, Jep Sayós and Lucca Maia.

NOTES

Published on 1st October 2020.

Many thanks to Pere Buil for his help in preparing these posts and to the students for sharing their work with us.