Project Brief:

“Together we will explore social housing, bee keeping, and urban cemetery solutions for Barcelona in the 21st Century; we will design propositions that combine housing solutions with 21-century lifestyles, methods of working, local ecologies of life via bee-farming, and death in urban environments. We will engage with the development metrics of the 22@ Innovation district to envision new forms of exchange between housing and industry. We will explore architectural solutions to safely house unrelated, single adults and families in economically and socially productive scenarios. We will explore unit aggregation in relation to overall building form. We will examine how known housing typologies can be redefined, recombined and reconstituted to address 21st century conditions. We will analyze urban networks across scales to understand the flows of people, goods, and capital through the site to propose inventive and sensitive architectural solutions.”

Project Abstract:

A microcosm, a nucleus for growth. Acknowledging both the communal and individual, and the material and spiritual realities of life. Two housing blocks, framing the site, provides the most public space to facilitate the activities and life of the community. Shared balconies within the embedded within the blocks, facilitating the connections between neighbours. Each unit, lending itself to the strengthening of family bonds. All three aim to develop together, each supporting one another. By meeting the street-scape with amenities against a backdrop of industrial, institutional, and private facades, it is hoped that the following proposal may begin to act as a catalyst in re-shaping 22@ into an area bustling with neighbours and friends alike that contributes to, and benefits from, those who occupy it. 

An economy centred around bees provides its residences opportunities to thrive within and contribute to this nucleus. The life of the bees completes a cycle of human life where ashes of loved ones return to the earth, drawn by plants, its nectar and pollen extracted by bees to sustain all through the goods we derive from their honey and waxes. As the ashes return to its material home, the soul transcends, and is memorialized through an ephemeral resting place in the sky, hovering just above the street surface - a constant reminder of the souls eternal journey, and the body’s impermanence.

Framework

As an emerging neighbourhood, this project was envisioned from the onset as a catalyst for the district. Specifically, identifying adjacent areas of public commercial and leisurely activities guided the arrangement of public scape for this intervention.

Process Work

Final Drawings and Models