Santa Caterina Market Rehabilitation

Ciutat Vella, unlike other Barcelona districts, is a complete city in itself… Perhaps this is the most salient characteristic of historical centres. From here onwards, everything becomes complicated. Current forms of planning are unable to manage the complexity of the situation. And planning, in its quest for immediate efficacy, simplifies the rules of the game down to intolerable limits. The first mistake is to speak of the 'old' and the 'new'. Constructed form establishes a complex relationship with time. Everything that has managed to survive to the present day is current, useful, contemporary. Furthermore, it allows you to take a step back in time in order to continue moving forward. Another mistake is to regard and defend demolition as the only way to 'solve' things. On the contrary, it is a question of using and re-using, like thinking and re-thinking about things. For architecture is merely a way of thinking about reality. The superimposition of different moments in time creates the spectacle of possibilities. It makes room for interplay between variations. To repeat; to make things again. The project must not lay emphasis on a specific moment in time but become a part of it. Our project sets out from a critical attitude towards existing forms of planning to propose a model that makes it possible to adapt to the complexity of the site; a set of regulations that contemplates more than the width of streets and the height of buildings; an initial approach that provides scope for developing the complexity of the city while respecting public commitments acquired over the years. We propose a model in which it will not be so easy to distinguish between refurbishment and new building; in which plazas, the continuous layout of extension and expansion passes over the street as the only urban mechanism.