Meet Macarena
Workshop Badajoz (ES) - Workshop Site 2
PARTICIPANTS:
Manuel Pinilla Fernández (ES), Borja Sallago Zambrano (ES), Alan Cortez de la Concha (MX), Winner in Espoo (FI) with "Wild Synapse"
Nuria Prieto González (ES), Omar Curros Simon (ES), Runner-up in A Coruña (ES) with "Embroidering The Edge"
Antonio Antequera Reviriego (ES), Winner in A Coruña (ES) with "Nice to 'Sea' You"
Ignacio Galbis Llorens (ES), Runner-up in Santo Tirso (PT) with "3tirsolines"
Coach: Bernd Vlay (AT)
SITE 2 - CITY & NATURE
Which Limit Between City & Countryside?
The site South of Olivenza includes the extensions of peripheral housing districts in direct contact with the nearby agricultural fields. The landscape looks like a flat land with green scars and is made of valleys running towards Lisbon, linking the waters of Olivenza to the Atlantic sea; hills and towers act as high points “controlling” the territory until the limit of the horizon, while large “enclaves” –cloisters & arenas– are embedded in the historical limits of the bastion elements, inducing a (non) dialogue between the open agricultural land and the mostly residential outer edge of the city.
The group had to develop scenarios to create an interface between build town & agriculture, without preventing the residential extension but including it into the agricultural natural landscape. Three topics rose from the reflections and subsequent questioning: the complicity of topography and water, or how to bring back the element of water as an identifying element to Olivenza?; the Limit as an objet trouvé, or how to turn the accidental city/walls relation into an added value for the city and the countryside?; and "100% Coexistence and 0% Interaction", or how to re-establish the power of the limit as a connecting medium? Through a rereading of the past the three “obsessions” discovered a wonderful “already there” to offer new pathways to Olivenza’s future.
Meet Macarena
Download the PDF here
Productive storytelling absorbs master planning, illustrating the life cycles of Macarena, whose ideas and initiatives are the main trigger for a fundamental transformation – Macarena therefore weaves together Olivenza with itself, its rural surroundings, and the world, making explicit the importance of a fruitful relation between local, regional and global scale.
At the same time the project reveals the potential of civic empowerment – Macarena and her neighbours network their everyday life ambitions, becoming “rurban entrepreneurs”. As such they are the driving force of Olivenza’s transformation process – a political body enabling the implementation of an urban development plan that directly emerges from the needs and desires of everyday life. A fascinating approach giving Olivenza a promising agenda for the activation of existing resources.
Download the PDF here
