- Ciutadella Workshop

The Final Degree Project (FDP) is without a doubt the student’s ‘coming of age’ after a long trajectory of more than five years of study. As in no other situation, the FDP represents a face-to-face confrontation with very essence of architectural planning (hence leaving to one side the essential dimension of the work). Obviously the FDP is also an investigation: a personal investigation into the planning limits of each student and a disciplinary investigation given that at no other time in students’ professional journey will they be able to take to such extremes an innovative idea, a new technique or the construction of their own personal story of what we call architecture. In other words, the FDP should embody the process of architectural maturity.

The ambition of our workshop is based on finding the skills to make projects capable of constructing an argumental thread that defends the connection between a new architectural structure of philosophy and space/time conception (which is also dynamic, complex and cross-cutting) and the new demands of a changing society, commensurate with the new challenges of contemporaneity and structured around new cross-cutting operational rationales.

The aim of our workshop is to uphold the close connection between the assimilation of multifocal, high-intensity urban parameters and the creative development associated with the contemporary project in terms of its ability to structure new key relationships, instigate evolving urban transitions and reinterpretations arising from inherent urban and architectural cultural traditions. One of the key elements of the workshop will be to dissolve the pure, absolute, iconic or object-based figure, this being understood as the manifestation of the absolute, and replace it with a new and particular “environmental condition” that will be driven by a certain rationale of boundaries. Physical boundaries, urban boundaries, re-naturalized boundaries, social boundaries, blurred boundaries, economic boundaries… and by assuming these environmental conditions, coming up with a process that makes an expeditious transit from static to strategic; in short, from something objective and object-based to something intersubjective and interpolated. This proposal for the foundations of an open planning project makes it essential to work in terms of dispositive interconnected activity – in other words, in terms of articulation of though, empowering the diversity of results, the equality of complexity and the promotion of a new relational framework. The result aims to give shape to what we call “new landscapes of reference”. Finally, the FDP is eminently disciplinary and hence has fixed points of reference, elements and concepts that provide a basis for the act of planning. In our case, we want to stress the importance of the choice of basic concepts around which the contemporary architectural project revolves, which we might call contextual, constructive and complex. It is for this disciplinary reason (which is not exempt from a certain measured indiscipline) that we are giving such importance to contributions from areas of knowledge with their own weight and logic such as urban planning and considerations on the territory and constructive techniques, the static structural domain and graphic/symbolic expression. Finally, and with equal importance in the development of the FDP, there is a behavioural model necessary to tackle an objective as intensive as this: the orchestration of new ethical values, the essential vector of illusion, and the profound belief that the act of planning is incredibly stimulating.

- Sagrera workshop

This final Projects course coincides with the Final Degree Project (FDP). Students should be aware that, in fact, this project is much more than a mere formality that they need to undertake in order to graduate: it is their final academic project and the first of their professional career. It is not an end but the starting point of a new experiential trajectory. Therefore it cannot be an end to learning either, as in a world of constant change, where knowledge is often invincible, it is essential to continue training and learning beyond educational centres. The course, and hence the Final Degree Project, evaluates an attitude. The students need to demonstrate their nature, their level of preparation and their predisposition towards the project. Architects, like doctors, are embodied by the way they behave in the professional and personal worlds in which they live and work; talking about attitude is the same as talking about vocation. What we are putting to the test in this final year is the student’s vocation to achieve something more important than just knowledge; the demonstration of a personal predisposition that must be intense, passionate and committed to both oneself and other people: the vocation of the architect.

-The Project as Manifesto: The project as a manifesto is a personal act. It is something that someone wants to say and transmit in response to an assignment. It stems from introspection, and relates to rational and analytic values as well as the more subjective and intangible ones. It is an intellectual response. A manifesto is also a declaration of commitment; consistent, responsible, and always opportune and relevant to the project.

-The Project as a Commitment: The project is also a commitment to other people. All commitments entail endeavour, as the project is at the service of the people and the place where it is located. Therefore, its origins lie in the collective culture, both stemming from and forming part of it. Its context therefore needs to be improved, anticipating common needs and providing the right response. Working in Barcelona, in such a modern setting, offers students the opportunity to understand the project as a commitment to their city.

-The Project as a Collective Task: The project is both a collective reflection and a social act. It is a form of teamwork in which knowledge is shared, generating synergies with other tasks. The architect is no longer an independent, autonomous individual. Students should work as a team and with the other workshops, sharing and taking advantage of the corrections and knowledge of others, as they will also be doing in their professional activities.

-The Project as a Discipline: Architecture is a discipline that responds to a profession. Students need to becomes masters of both compositional and technical aspects, and learn how to coordinate the different areas involved, such as structures, urban planning, installations, sustainability and accessibility, amongst others.

-The Project as Emotion: Finally, the project should be surprising. Students need to adopt an innovative, experimental and daring attitude; to be nonconformist and to constantly question themselves. They should seek out inventiveness in order to surprise and thrill, raising the bar and then surpassing it.