For 5 days the 6 schools met at the ETSAV to start outlining possible paths to follow for each of the 3 challenges (Ceebu Jeen, Teranga, Sutura).

The objective was the design of strategies – based on the different analyses, diagnosis and stances – that allowed the ideas to be transformed into concrete architectural projects. This was the phase of constructing the question, the declaration of the different possible actions. The idea was not to try and simulate a drawn and defined project in one week. The aim was to hone in on the idea and describe where it came from and how it would be developed.

 

Workshop Phases:

Phase Zero. Individually and before the workshop starts in Barcelona. Walk through your cities, check out your library. Observe. Identify inspirational images for each of the 3 challenges (communal eating, welcome shelter, dispersed and small neighborhood facilities) that have been proposed. Choose a transformative action linked to the presented topics, one that has a special interest you want to share. An initial stance.

It can be photographs, drawings, diagrams…Something that describes identified actions or customs. You can also respond to specific facilities or projects, preferably ones that already exist.

When we meet in Barcelona we will share these.

The idea behind this first exercise is to hit on what is already going on. Could be partially, could be spontaneously, casually or “irregularly.” It doesn’t matter, it all adds up. The objective is to turn an intelligent eye on your different environments, build a reference repository, and begin the Workshop from you.

 

Declaration Phase.

We will create 3 big project teams, each one will focus on 1 of the 3 challenges.

Each project team will be divided into groups of preferably 4 people.

A mix of schools and places of origin. The project methodologies will be the same regardless of the topic addressed.

So, the proposal is functional work that will produce relevant material from:

Day 1: Presentation

After some general presentations, each of you will make a brief explanation about the 3 images-idea that you will have brought.

Day 2: Planning survey and field work

A day dedicated to the understanding the proposed themes, but also the chosen sites and the people who inhabit them. The Survey and field work is a summary drawing that brings together the definition of the activity and the qualities of what already exists (the spaces and the people who inhabit them), consistent with the problem to be solved and what the architecture project comprises. It helps to understand, through observation of everyday life, where the proposal lies with regards to the history of the conflict or issue addressed. It helps to identify the agents (technicians, neighbors, associative network, etc.) related to the project and defining strategies for interaction with them.

Format: Free axonometric drawing. Volumetric image where the relevant site architectures, diagrams, flows and systems can all be present.

Day 3: Percept*

The first document proposed for the study of the design. The word comes from joining the words ‘perception’ and ‘concept’– where an intuition about the theme or the type of project to be carried out in light of everything learned during Day 1 is reflected in a single graphic document.

The percept is a statement of thematic, strategic, aesthetic intentions, which could also become technological, arising from the initial intuition.

Format: A single image, usually a collage, drawing or photomontage, and that must first show intuitive programmatic approaches and objects (concept) about the specific material nature of the preceding perception.

Day 4: Clips 

Summary video clip that structures the challenge and the team’s approach based on the use of the graphic objects produced primarily over the previous days.

Format: 3min

Day 5: Debate

• Presentation of video clips.
• Debate
• Preparation of phase two, for schools
• Alimentació? instructions on the website
• Instructions to BAU design teams

 

Subsequent phases:

Project Phase. The work will continue to be developed in the different schools, according to the criteria established by the teaching team.

On April 23 results will be delivered that will form part of the exhibition proposal in Venice.

In Venice

During the workshop we will collectively agree on the exhibition formats for Venice.

* Percept

Concepts are the true invention of philosophy, and then there are what we might call percepts: percepts are the domain of art. What are percepts? I think an artist is someone who creates percepts. So why use a strange word, “percept,” instead of perception? Precisely because percepts are not perceptions. I would say: what does a man of letters, a writer, a novelist want? I believe that he wants to build collections of perceptions, of sensations that survive those who experience them. And that’s a percept. A percept is a collection of perceptions and sensations that survives the one who experiences them.

G. Deleuze (Documentary, L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze)