P3.1 Reflection

Our project was developed through the observation of varying levels of social spaces spread out across the city of Barcelona and how people related to one another in different spatial environments. Some spaces have lots of balconies close to the ground where people are talking down to people on the street or large plazas where big events take place for the many different cultural holidays. Our aim through the project was to reflect these ideas of spaces of vitality within the urban fabric in our building. Our massing follows the form of a cascade with community spaces on each level’s roof terrace. Over emphasis on envelope is not necessarily a bad thing because the shape and massing of the structure will ultimately organize the spaces within it. The materiality of the envelope also tells a story about the building itself and the ideas it is trying to project (Envelope, Zaera-Polo, et. al.). Our building has a concrete structural base and then embraces CLT shear wall for the rest. We utilized the CLT shear wall strategically placing it at the entrance to each community terrace and throughout the building have wood in a place where it can tangibly be interacted with and touched. 

One of our visits was to la Chalmeta, a co-op housing development in Marina del Prat Vermell. After our visit we gained a valuable insight into what makes this type of housing successful and how shared spaces are best brought into dialogue within the larger community. We learned that there needs to be a certain number of people to discuss the choices for development in shared spaces and if the number were to grow too big then no one would be able to agree with what to do there. The variety of spaces for people to inhabit in our building including, the private balconies, community terraces, and podium park, all allow for the creation of a sense of place at various levels. The architecture or structure is not what people generally fondly remember but it is the activities and people within these spaces that are tied to this remembrance and sense of place. While European cities have a much denser and richer historical building density than the suburbia of the US, both places have different relations of sense of place to rituals, customs or every Saturday farmer’s market with a specific building or park. (A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time, Jackson). We brought this sense of place into our cascading building by creating unique activities in each space or cultivating a space for certain activities that can then be tied to a memory of that place for the future inhabitants. 

For the room plans of our building we built around the concept of adaptability with structural columns taking the center of a grid where walls can be placed or taken out based on the inhabitants needs. Space, Raum or Ma are interpretations of the thing created from an arrangement of objects to create an area within or around. The Japanese sense of place wasn’t tied to harsh geometry and perfection because they believed that this was only for the gods and their actions should reflect the impurities or randomness of the world. They decided to offset doorways, frames or walls off axes to create a more natural environment and sense of place that reflected nature. This led to a system of hierarchical modulation of spaces to create unique senses of place for communities (The Japanese Sense of Place, Nietschke). This hierarchical modulation is highlighted in the layout of the interior spaces of our building allowing for a much more sustainable ability to adapt to the user and thereby creating much better long term resilience.