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Vertical Workshop
The UIC Barcelona School of Architecture’s Vertical Workshop is held over approximately ten days, starting in the first week of the academic year. It has been one of the School’s most important and iconic events since it was first started in 1997. The Vertical Workshop at the School of Architecture brings together students from the 1st through to 5th year studies, who are then mixed up into different teams, each led by a pair of renowned young architects from Spain. The teams then work to create a real architecture project based on social aims.
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For this new edition of the Vertical Workshop, titled “The Rec Comtal in Vallbona”, students from the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture built a prototype of urban furniture aimed at enhancing the remains of the Rec Comtal canal in the Barcelona district of Vallbona.
The 22nd edition of the Vertical Workshop was coordinated by the architect and lecturer at the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture, Íñigo Ugalde, and was co-managed by the architects Carles Enrich and Andrés Lupiáñez. Both architects have worked actively on restoring the Rec Comtal in recent years.
The primary focus of the workshop was to study the social and environmental problems in the immediate surroundings of the Rec Comtal as it passes through Vallbona. This diagnosis allowed students to detect the areas that most urgently require work. Proposals for short-term and participatory action were based on the use of recycled materials and waterproof fabric donated a local company, Sedatex.
The Vertical Workshop has always been an important event that represents the spirit of the school, and over recent years it has consolidated and extended its innovative nature.
Reclaiming former agricultural land surrounding the Rec Comtal for local residents in Vallbona was the objective of the winning project: “70m2”, a proposal overseen by the architects Adrià Gaudet and Sandra Torres. The winning project was based on a study of the square metres of free space in Vallbona and how this is proportionate to the number of people living in the neighbourhood. The students behind the proposal suggested assigning a space to each person living in the neighbourhood to reclaim the square metres of land as productive space by using water from the former Rec Comtal canal.
In addition to the winning project, students also produced the following projects: “Have Fun”: this project consisted of designing a fixture that could provide shade and seating for users, as well as the potential for providing a horizontal surface to use for work or to display products. “Rec productiu” (Productive Rec): students came up with a hanging structure lower than the wall which could be used to hang nests and vegetation. “Wired”: this installation consisted of a bamboo forest suspended from the bottom of the bridge joining Vallbona with Torre Baró.
