The Price of Globalization in Architecture

Some new buildings of Barcelona that do not "construct the city" was the theme of the tertulia. Agbar, Auditori, Gas Natural, Dwellings by Clotet, etc. are isolated buildings that do not pay any attention at all to inmediate public space.

The thing is that those buildings "construct the Metropolis", which is the useful unity to participate in the global scale, as the last two posts of this blog sustain. The public space in the global scale is the media: newspapers, magazines, TV, etc.

Let's hope we have had enough Forums and this sort of mediatic buildings and get back to the kind of architecture that has elevated the quality of life of Barcelona and its citizens so much in the last two decades. Real, material and everyday architecture and luxurious public space is the only way talented people from around the world will come to live here and start new businesses.

Mercat de Mercats

This last days the city centre of Barcelona became a huge market place, "El Mercat de Mercats", a truly market not a virtual one. Lots of food and natural products in the public space. No wonder, the word market and the word square means the same thing in peninsular Spanish as markets began in the main squares of cities like Barcelona. The text and the audio is in Catalan, the beautiful language of Catalunya that has literature and poetry of great quality.

Mèrce Global

Uno de los espectáculos más multitudinarios (1.4000.000 personas inundaron las calles de la Barcelona durante La Mèrce, según El País) fue el concierto de Abrar-ul-Hak, pakistaní que mezcla la música tradicional de su país con el pop. El contraste con esta maravilla de experiencia global lo dieron los supuestos anti-sistema a los tres dias en la Manifestación de la Huelga General. De todas maneras hay que ir acostumbrándose a estos contrastes: han llegado para quedarse.

Art in the street

The image is form La Vanguardia, and the rest of the album is worth watching

At the quarter of Gracia, in Barcelona, they decorate the streets in their anual celebration week. Modrian would have been delighted to walk down this instalation.

Public Space and Traditions

Royal Tracks, Spain

The first thing that defines public space is its legal condition: it belongs to everyone.

In Spanish cities, since 1273, many of those spaces have to allow that flocks of transhumant pasturage pass through them. All this traffic is organized in the so called "Royal Tracks" (Cañadas reales). The one that crosses Segovia has 500 km long and starts in León and ends in Extremadura, close to Portugal.

The use of public space for this purpose, as an exercise of old rights, is the only way we urbanites realize this traditional lifestyle still exists. How many of our own urban traditions depend on the existence of public space? Probably the majority.

Do not miss the video: the sheep at the centre are at a standstill while the outside ring turns around.

Open City International Summer School

In the birth town of Giorgio Armani, there is going to take place the Open City International Summer School of the Politecnico di Milano.

During three weeks, 6-23 September, this design workshop will gather together people from all over the world to work on public space, a specially important theme in the era of globalization. It will be a good occasion to test the validity of our five years old proposal of the Welfare Space.