Site Plan
This project is breaking the Myth of The Block. The traditional story of the grid dissolves into an oneiric dreamscape in which the block develops spaces for potential encounters. A rendez-vous between curve and straight, individuals and forms, rationalism and strangeness.
Grounf Floor Plan
The ground floor is a stage for different scenarios to happen such as the extension of programs from the surrounding buildings, a playground for children, a space for street art, a marketplace, and a pop-up stage. As the proposal is elevated from the ground, it serves as protection from sun, rain and generates an outdoor living space.
Site Section
Each housing platform is one floor and has a courtyard which leads to the circulation point that goes through the ind buildings.
The curved typology is reflecting the liberation of the city from the traditions of the straight-line in Barcelona. As a reaction to the congestion of the blocks and of the ground level, I explored ways in which the design can create a porous urban elevation by elevating the housing programs.
The streets of the 20th century were conceived as infrastructure plans such as Cerda’s plan for Barcelona that brought an indoor living style since the design of public spaces were not part of the plan. Cerda’s plan doesn’t prioritise pedestrians but infrastructures such as transportation, water and waste circulation. It was conceived as a circulation strategy with a good working street network and the spaces left in between were filled with residential blocks. The proposal investigates ways in which streets can be designed for pedestrians in the areas where Cerda’s Blocks are implemented. It is by elevating the housing programmes that the design generates a pedestrian streetscape and humanises the scale of the Barcelona Block.
​
Attempts to confront the tradition of the straight-line in Barcelona were made by Gaudi, Coderch, and Miralles. Consequently, what if now once again we had a dialectic of the curve in a city that is built on the principles of the straight-line? The curved typology is reflecting a liberation of the city from the traditions of the straight-line. In a smaller scale, the surrealists rejected the straight-line manifesto and used the curves as expression of changing ideas. However, their work remained in the scale of the furniture. The housing scene of Barcelona is still mechanical and repetitive. The proposal is looking to extend their approach to the urban scale for a liberation against the infrastructure-based plan.
Plan Showing the Communal Kitchen-Yards and the Housing Units
The housing clusters are organised around a central courtyard and inner communal kitchen yards with indoor and outdoor spaces that separate the housings into two and create communal area almost inside the units. The plan of the housing is quite deep, so the communal kitchen yards and shafts serve as ventilation spaces.
Communal Kitchen-Yard
In this kitchen view you can see how light infiltrates from the roof reliefs and the way the kitchen-yard separates the housing into two:
The most public space (living room) at the right side and the most private part (bedroom, bathroom area) at the left side of the image.
Platform Courtyard
This is a view from one of the courtyards demonstrating a daily scene.
Rooftop as Public Space - 01
Within the very clean rectilinear pattern of the grid, a chaotic overlapping roof scene exists, and these rooftops are abundantly used spaces in Barcelona. So, I decided to design the roof of my proposal as overlapping curved reliefs.
Rooftop as Public Space - 02
The roof reliefs become public rooftops and light wells for the kitchen areas.
Street Level Designed for Pedestrians
This view demonstrates the ground floor space as a public square with suspended gardens, another layer of social space between the ground floor and the housing platforms. Thus, creates an inverted figure for Barcelona, the Super Square of the Super Block, a dreamscape for pedestrians.
© 2021 By Daphne Esin