MBIArch Notes: Design Studios

By BIArch | Published: February 28, 2011
Core Design Studio review with Iñaki Ábalos

Core Design Studio review with Iñaki Ábalos. Photo by C. Cabrera.

 

The second term of the MBIArch Master in Architecture program is structured around two design studios and the Core Design Studio. Focusing on the hybrid proto-typology of the “Verticalscape“, which combines architectural, landscape, and environmental considerations, the Core Design Studio led by Iñaki Ábalos will feature seven different stages of in-depth research and intensive design production. The studio is supported by Javier García-Germán, partner at Totem Arquitectos and Associate Professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

 

MBIArch students working on studio projects

MBIArch students working on studio projects.

 

Aside from delivering the first BIArch Open Lecture of the Spring term, David Adjaye also directs one of the two other design studios of the term, which cover four weeks of design work (the second studio will be directed by Stan Allen). Here students will work on a site in a former industrial neighborhood in Igualada, a midsized city 60km west of Barcelona. Supported by Manel Bailo and Alexa Plascencia, students will propose projects that point to the transformation of the site andoffer alternatives for local production and growth.

 

David Adjaye in one of the studio reviews.

We will address each design studio in detail in the following posts.

 

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MBIArch Notes: Productive Land Program (PLP)

By BIArch | Published: February 9, 2011


The Productive Land Program (PLP) was a two-week seminar and site-specific workshop dedicated to analyzing and developing the productive capacities of land in a semi-rural context.

Directed by Joan Roig—member of the BIArch Board of Directors and Principal of Batlle i Roig Arquitects—and with the support of architects Anna Viader and María Buhigas, as well as biologist Marc Montilleó, MBIArch students reviewed specific planning frameworks and methodologies and where presented with relevant case studies before setting out for their workshop/excursion, in which they had to propose a specific working hypothesis and intervention.


Students and faculty visited greenhouses, irrigation systems, landfills, timber farms, vineyards and wineries, rice paddies, rural co-ops, and agrotourism facilities; recording and analyzing the productive infrastructures that support the dynamic landscapes of the Catalan countryside. They toured the very distinct settings of the Delta de l’Ebre, Priorat, Montsant, and the Franja de Ponent. The Parc the la Mitjana, a natural reserve on the outskirts of Lleida (a city located about 150 km west from Barcelona) was the site chosen for the project proposals.

Students had to take into account actual site considerations and constraints, but also tailor their designs to specific economic and productive scenarios, in which strategies for sustainable development are drawn from and in response to a specific “logic of place”. The workshop emphasized that, beyond contemplation, landscape is meaningful as an active resource, that “production is the germ and the reason for the existence of any new place.”

All photos by Andrés Flajszer

See also: PLP Student Project Gallery
See also: PLP Flickr Set

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MBIArch Notes: Ferran Echegaray, Director of the Barcelona Airport

By BIArch | Published: December 2, 2010
BIArch Journal - Ferran Echegaray, Director of the Barcelona Airport

Ferran Echegaray, Director of the Barcelona Airport

The MBIArch’s Urban and Territorial Studies course reflects on ubiquitous, global socio-technological conditions that frame urban experience and development, through a project-based understanding of the evolution of cities spanning from early industrial to present day neo-tertiary societies.

As a part of the course’s guests lectures series, the Director of the Barcelona Airport, Ferran Echegaray, was invited to provide his insight on the logistic ordering of the city’s airport network as a relevant case-study of metropolitan clusters. Echegaray provided extensive information regarding the managerial complexity of programs, functions,  as well as the present and foreseeable challenges contemporary aerial transportation hubs and infrastructures face.

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