Masía Urbana

TEAM DATA

Team Representative: Marta López Rubio  (ES) – urbanist architect
Contributor: Gonzalo Pardo Díaz (ES) – urbanist architect

+34 660 083 302 - contact@masia-urbana.com - masia-urbana.com

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G. Pardo Díaz & M. López Rubio

INTERVIEW
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1. How did you form the team for the competition?

We were already a team before the competition. We have been working together since we meet at the university in 2007: it was love at first sight.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic: the place of productive activities within the city?

Instead of concentrating all the program in a single volumen, we decided to distribute it in similar density units in order to create an isotropic space where all the productive spaces, the farm, the dwellings and the work places had the same importance. With no hierarchy.

3. How did this issue and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?

One of the main objectives of the project was to join the different limits of the plot. In one hand we had to work between the mountain of Collserola and the Ronda de Dalt (a big road), and on the other hand two neighbourhoods of different scales and built in different periods of time. The result of the relation between the nature and the city was Urban Masía, a porous productive system that allowed us to organize the project. 

4. Have you treated this issue previously? What were the reference projects that inspired yours?

Although we have been interested in this issue, we have never had the chance to work on it, so this is our first time, and we have to say that it is a really interesting way of working. The main reference projects have been the japanese architect Ishigami because of his work with the plants and the architecture, and also the japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka famous for his natural farming and revegetation of desertified lands. A third reference is the architect Luca Galofaro and his Project Luglio.

5. Urban-architectural projects like the ones in Europan can only be implemented together with the actors through a negotiated process and in time. How did you consider this issue in your project?

One of the most interesting thing of the project was that everything was linke: the vegetation and the dwellings. In other words it was a very flexible system that enables to generate other ways of life including the traditional ones. From another point of view, this system gives the oportunity to build the area not only in different times but also with different architects.

6. Is it the first time you have been awarded a prize at Europan? How could this help you in your professional career?

Although it is not the first time we are participating at Europan, it is the first time we have been awarded. With this special mention we will be very happy to keep on participating at Europan 15th edition.