A NEW RONDA another type of efficiency

Projects 5&6 Course Coordinator: PhD.Arc. Felipe Pich-Aguilera

Professors: Arc. Jaime Batlle, PhD. Arc. Álvaro Cuellar & PhD.Arc. Íñigo Ugalde

Invited Schools of Architecture: École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Montpellier - ENSAM

& University of Rome La Sapienza

Within the frame of the CTPA - Confederació de Tallers de Projectes d’ArquitecturaParticipants Hackathon “Des-Cobrir Les Rondes” October 2018

2018-19

• To integrate urban planning and architectural design with an efficient project at all scales.

• To prepare students for the TFG (Final Degree Studio) with the design of a small scale facility within a complex urban project.

• To introduce the concept of ‘Regeneration’ to the project by giving existing urban and architectural elements a new use and approach. • Introduce the concept of Sustainability at all scales.

• Internationalisation: International jury in the Mid term & Final review. Share the course subject with another foreign school of architecture.

This year we will be working together with the University of Leuven, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Department of Architecture of Belgium.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

P5 SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

METHODOLOGY

REQUIREMENTS AND ORGANIZATION

P6 SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

A NEW RONDAanother type of efficiency.

UIC / SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE / 4th YEARSYLLABUS / PROJECTS 5 & 6 / YEAR 2018-19

The course introduces students to the tools and methodology of the contemporary urban-project, which understands that architecture, in the current context of a deficit of public investment, has the need to regenerate by targeted interventions that generate synergies in certain places of the city from the architecture itself.

The course will be conducted both by urban design and architectural design professors, coordinated together to provide students with the necessary knowledge to meet the contemporary challenges for the scale of the urban-project and the civic architecture.

PhD. Arch. Felip Pich-Aguileracourse coordinator

Arch. Jaime Batlle, PhD. Arch. Álvaro Cuellar & PhD. Arch. Íñigo Ugaldecourse professors

École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Montpellier - ENSAM& University of Rome La SapienzaInvited Schools of Architecture

Within the frame of the CTPA - Confederació de Tallers de Projectes d’ArquitecturaParticipants Hackathon “Des-Cobrir Les Rondes” October 2018

Architecture takes a long process until it materializes in a specific project. That process, far from being erosive, is a process that nourishes and evolves the intuitive impulse from the very first ideas.The Architectural Project becomes consistent by confronting reality, for its ultimate goal is

FROM “LA RONDA” AS INSFRASTRUCTURETO “LA RONDA” AS URBAN SPACEWith 37 km in length, 68 entrances and exits, 105 ha of driveway and an area of influence of 530 ha, the “Rondes” are a urban infrastructure of great capacity and intensity of traffic. Its main function is being a metropolitan connector and its mainly dedicated to the private mobility of people and goods. Through nine big knots and 36 links, the “Rondes” connect with the main road accesses of the city. In certain sections, the “Rondes” manage to integrate into the urban fabric and generate spaces for the city. In others, the infrastructure forms a true urban barrier that segregates fabrics and limits the possibilities of creating a more polycentric metropolitan space.

Beyond the “Ronda” as an infrastructure, the “Ronda” as connector or the “Ronda” as border, the “Ronda” represent today an urban space of more than 25 years of history that houses, in its immediate surroundings, a population similar to the one that currently lives in the district of “Ciutat Vella”. To this fact it’s necessary to add the people who daily use the infrastructure to go from one place to another, specifically 761,620 vehicles per day.

Understanding the “Rondes” as an urban space implies, on the one hand, to assume its complexity and, therefore, the diversity of identities and dynamics that it incorporates. On the other hand, to understand its multi-scalar nature: the “Rondes” encompass a linear circulation body, a cross-sectional area and a regional articulation network.

Within “Las Rondas”, our working site will be located in the section of the “Ronda de Dalt” delimited between the neighborhoods of Les Roquetes, Verdum, La Prosperitat and Trinitat Nova in Exit 2, Via Julia of the “Ronda de Dalt”. Specifically, we will work at the confluence of Via Julia and Aiguablava street upon their arrival at the Ronda de Dalt (B-20) next to the Mare de Deu de Montserrat Market, which will be the part of the exercise.

The course will be divided into two different groups. Both groups will work on the same site along “LA RONDA”. Each workshop will work together to make a common urban proposal defining a sort of a “masterplan” to transform the site along the “Ronda” into a new Public Space.

Therefore, the first part of the exercise will be on an urban scale and will analyse in depth the context of the site. The various urban fabrics that go from the surrounding neighborhoods, to the sports facilities south the Ronda (the football field is very appreciate by the neighbors, and a new swimming pool is being planned for many years), passing through an important empty plot, currently used as a parking space separating both sides of the Ronda and disconnecting the urban fabric. Particular attention should also be paid to the Mare de Deu de Montserrat Market built in the sixties, since it will be part of the exercise to decide what to do with it. But above all projects and the master plans will have to deal with the question of what to do with the Ronda, how could and should be interpreted today and for in the future.

The second part of the exercise will be developed individually and each student will find a place to locate their project in relation to the overall proposal and therefore closely related to other individual projects.

As a preparatory course for the Final Degree Project (FYP), the courses of Projects 5 and 6 will have an annual continuity proposing a unique exercise throughout the year. To do this, students should work simultaneously individually and collectively, understanding that the work of an architect today must combine both attitudes. On the one hand they will join in groups to analyse and work on a single strategies for a sequence of public buildings. They will work together joining the public spaces within the Ronda. On the other, from the very beginning, each of them must design a unique project consisting of a small scale public facility to be built within the proposed masterplan.

Developing a project is to establish a constant dialogue between the single building and the urban proposal, between the individual and collective work, to be able to break the pre-established prejudices and premade decisions, being able to modify the proposal freely from all different scales.

A developed and complete proposal of the building is required in all its aspects; the site, location, floor plans, elevations, sections, construction details and facades among others. And it will also be necessary to have a clear program/distribution proposal together with a structural, accessibility and sustainability approach along with the installations of the building. The project will

also include several working models, a model of the ensemble representing the sequence of projects within the same group, and some views, diagrams and images for the understanding of the project. On the other hand, an urban master plan will need to be defined for each group according to the chosen strategy as a sequence of public spaces and buildings along “the Ronda”. The project will take into account that the workplace should extend beyond the boundaries of the organization understanding their position in the neighborhood. So the project will need to properly fit into the existing buildings and landscape as well as understand and integrate the free public space between them. Within the masterplan, the project of each student shall be inserted in all its possible variants. To show the urban sequence, all necessary analysis, site and location drawings along with all working models that best express the intentions of the project in relation to “the Ronda”, the surrounding landscale and the city, will be required.

The course is annual and is divided into two semesters that correspond to Projects 5 and Projects 6.

- During the first semester, which corresponds to P5, the project will be developed from the urban scale up to an equivalent level of a Concept Design. There will be at the same time an individual proposal combined with a master plan to be developed in group.

- The second semester, which corresponds to P6, will focus on the resolution of the project from all technical areas without leaving behind the urban plan and the architectural proposal: construction, structures, installations, accessibility and sustainability. To do this, students will work individually and will develop their proposal to an equivalent detailed level of an Executive Project. Classes will be held every Friday at classroom alpha 103. The hours will vary depending on the assigned professor.

The course is a Design Studio and therefore the active participation of students will be valued. The hours of each session will be devoted to joint and individual corrections given by professors and guests. It will combine lectures with workshops, discussions, analysis of references, debates, workshops with scale models and pin ups of several exercises designed by students. Throughout the two semesters, one for each project (P5 and P6), there will be 4 submissions, which must be printed and pined up in class. All intermediate submissions will be also submitted through the Moodle / Drive in PDF and JPG digital format, in single A3 size with one drawing/image per slide and always with the student’s name written in the file. For example: JOHNADAMS_Analisis.

THE SITE: WHY THE “RONDAS”Today, despite being a reality in many European cities, road rings tend to be questioned for the failure to solve the problem of the congestion, for its ephemeral capacity to dissuade the traffic of the central area and for its conception exclusively destined to the private vehicle. Also, these routes are put in doubt for their environmental impact and for the discontinuities that they generate in the urban fabric.

Citizen health and the quality of life of the inhabitants of the cities is now at the center of the urban model. This not only implies moving towards a more sustainable mobility but re-formulating certain spaces to implement a new hierarchy of distribution of the public space where pedestrian and reproductive tasks occupy a more prominent place. In this line, the great bet of Barcelona is the Superilles project and to increase the cycling network.

Although the “Rondes” of Barcelona were built with a vocation to formalize the margins (its name is attributed to the “camí de ronda”, traditionally a transition space), in recent years the “Rondes” environment has been transformed and consolidated.

to transform it. In that sense, the traditional separation between the different disciplines involved in a project (urbanism, architectural design, construction, structures, etc.) shouldn’t exist. It is precisely the transversality of these disciplines which stimulates the design process, due to the rich interaction that arises by joining different knowledge.

The course aims to address the architectural project from a BROAD scope of scales, addressing the large urban scale to the small domestic and constructive detail scale.

On the other hand, during the transit between scales, the course will encourage the maximum INTERACTION between different disciplines and knowledge, not only as tools for the development of the ideas, but also as its own stimulant.

In fact, some sections of the “Rondes” space house some of the main projects in the current metropolitan agenda. In the neighborhood of Marina del Prat Vermell, for example, the construction of 11,000 houses is planned, the arrival of 28,000 new inhabitants and 10,000 jobs.

Thinking about the “Rondes” today, therefore, it’s not only framed within the context of redefining the use of the private vehicle and overcoming the established air pollution limits, also in a need to understand the infrastructure as a backbone of the current metropolitan city.

Cities like Paris or Amsterdam are already putting on the table new approaches and future scenarios in relation to their corresponding ring roads. Barcelona Regional’s hackathon R’s “Dis-cover the Rondes” aims to open the debate on the future of the Rondes of Barcelona.

COURSE CALENDAR + DEADLINES

p5Intermediate Review E 1/1000September 28th Field work on STRATEGIES & AREAS.First review of the proposals.MASTER PLAN proposal. GROUP WORK

MID TERM presentation - Joint Review E 1/500October 19th MASTER PLAN proposal. Choice of the specific project location and first proposal.PRELIMINARY STUDIES of the Project.Ground floor of the public facility.INDIVIDUAL & GROUP WORK HACKATHON - ctpaOcotober 20th/21st Produce a 2 minute video of the group work.Design and execute an urban action. FINAL JURY P5 - Joint Review E 1/200November 23rd Delivery of the BASIC PROJECT.Detailed description of the project.Delivery of the structural approach, MEP, sustainability and accessibility.INDIVIDUAL & GROUP WORK

p6Intermediate Review E 1/100February 8th Delivery of the PRE-EXECUTIVE PROJECT.Preliminary version of the executive project including a general approach of all the constructive and technical documents.INDIVIDUAL WORK

MID TERM Presentation - Joint Review E 1/50March 1st Delivery of the EXECUTIVE PROJECT.Detailed and complete version of the executive project including all the documents to describe the constructiveaspects of the project.

FINAL JURY P6 - Joint Review E 1/50-20March 29th Transversal Exhibition of the Project in all its globality.Exhausting all the scales the student must explain the urban approach, with its implementation proposal, the organization of the program, its concept ideas and its materiality, as well as all the technical and constructive aspects of each discipline or technical area.INDIVIDUAL & GROUP WORK