Atelier Prats, Autumn Semester 2023, Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio
Second Hand – A Urban Refettorio in Barcelona
Second Hand
A used suit carries the memory of its previous user; to start wearing it is an exercise that requires confidence and time until you begin to feel it is your own. Dressing “second hand” means introducing yourself into a discipline of adaptation, and as architects, when we work with existing buildings to adapt them to a new use, there is something similar to the process of adapting a garment that has been used previously by others: you have to unstitch and recognize the pattern used before, cut on one side to extend on another; maybe a new piece of fabric is needed, we may even have to add some pockets… and so on until it identifies with and responds to the new user.
There is something of the ‘second hand’ when working in old buildings, in places where you have not participated in their creation, playing the role of an observer.
It might happen that when trying on an old garment, we are lucky enough to find something hidden in one of its pockets; this element can become the start of a new story for us. This semester we will be working in the old town of Barcelona, a place used and lived by so many people, so rich in accumulation of experiences, where surely each of us will be able to find its personal token inside this old urban pocket.
The Atelier will begin by observing things that others have done, and that we can discover as an outsider. We will observe by drawing, recording everything, what we like and what we don’t, until it becomes our own drawing, our own project, which we begin to modify, adapting it to the new programme.
The Atelier works with two parallel objectives: Food Scarcity & Emotional Heritage
Food Scarcity
‘‘Every day we inhabit spaces made by food, unconsciously repeating actions that are as old as cities themselves.’’
(Carolyn Steel, Hungry City)
Food plays a fundamental role in the definition of the cultural identity of a place and its communities: it has the power to root people in a place, whether a public environment or a domestic one, bringing individuals together around the same table, and evoking a common sense of belonging. Sharing a meal is a powerful cultural and social gesture of our daily life, often taken for granted: it pleases our senses, providing for physical and mental wellbeing and it is characterised by its own rituality, often taking place at the same hours and in a dedicated space. Schools’ canteens, private homes’ dining rooms, local pubs and restaurants, old farmhouses: there is an immense variety of social environments and spaces built around food.
During this semester we will organize and design a space to share food among people for whom access to food is difficult. This space that we call Refettorio, should provide a beautiful and spiritual atmosphere, it will be a space that conveys calm and trust among the different individuals that probably do not know each other and share a meal together. How to make people, that do not know each other, feel together? How can the atmosphere of a space bring calm and beauty to raise the spirit?
Emotional Heritage
“It is not only people that contain the memory of a place, but buildings too are loaded with memories of the uses and lives that occupy them. The built fabric reflects social behaviour. It speaks of a way of using the ground, the sky, of a way of inhabiting. As an architect, to read the memories held in buildings and in people is to think about a future that counts on that past.”
(Flores & Prats, Emotional Heritage, Biennale di Architettura di Venezia 2023)
We propose to work in urban contexts in transformation, observing and identifying the valuable social and physical qualities embedded in the area. Being aware that not only people preserve the memory of a neighbourhood, we will discover that buildings also echo a multiplicity of uses and lives.
Our aim is to discover the emotional reality contained in existing buildings, and to test their capacity to adapt to new conditions of occupation. We will work in the city of Barcelona, where we have identified three different sites within the dense historic city centre. These three proposed areas have at the same time some analogies as well as very different characteristics: all of them are suitable for developing a program related to the scarcity of food and the building of a community around it, a project around the central space of the Refettorio, that will bring new energy to both the building and the surrounding neighbourhood. The exercise of this semester will be focused both on urban and social rehabilitation.
Professor: Eva Prats
Studio Flores & Prats
Assistants: Michela Romanò, Laura Martínez del Olmo