Ditch and watercourse

This exercise examines the quantity and type of space in the 22@ district. By analyzing open-access areas, it reveals how spaces proliferate organically as extensions of coworking areas, where productive functions dominate: spaces of capital. This orientation presents a conflict: vacant land or abandoned facilities in the area awaiting the plan’s developments, are occupied by new uses that reveal the social realities this urban model seeks to obscure. The project tackles, through smaller-scale interventions, the fragmentation of urban connectivity, housing shortage, and significant demolition.

The project considers the area as a result of several overlapping traces, aiming not only to resolve them, but to unravel and clarify their significance and value. Developed in three scales, the first stage focuses on recovering the historical Pere IV axis, reestablishing it as a new communication route for the district. This axis provides link to various historical agricultural patterns, linking the area to its history while opening opportunities for future urban development. At the second scale, the proposal addresses the remnants of an ancient irrigation channel and an underground stream that flow beneath the area. These elements were interrupted by the construction of the Cerdà block, which closed off internal urban gaps within the intervention zone. The plan seeks to restore these water traces, integrating them in the existing urban fabric. This restoration forms the backbone of the project, enabling the connection of key heritage elements through passageways, and allowing for their reactivation and restoration of historical ties. The project supports in parallel the densification of the area, integrating new housing and fostering urban growth. A reinterpretation of the intersection between the two water traces proposes densifying the block. Its structure is understood as two overlapping grids: one with urban pieces placed at the corners, and another with directions running parallel and perpendicular to Pere IV at the center. The intervention, aligned with this spatial conception, suggests consolidating the corners with housing and articulating them with the historical orientations through open spaces. These spaces are assigned varying levels of privacy.