I. SUMMARY INFORMATION
Project
267597
Status
Submitted
Award category
Reinvented places to meet and share
You want to submit
NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS AWARDS : existing completed examples
Project title
Repensar la Periferia
Full project title
Repensar la Periferia · Rethinking the Periphery
Description
Repensar la Perfieria is an innovative cultural project based on a collaborative architecture process. It proposes a reflexion around the outskirts of Pamplona, Spain, by questionning the role of culture in these neighbourhoods, the interactions inside of the spaces of the suburbs and their relationship to the center. Moreover, it explores the necessities, requests and issues that the inhabitants of these zones are facing daily, by collectively self-building incubators in the public space.
Where was your project implemented in the EU?
Spain
Navarra
Calle Calvario, 2
42.831740
-1.591290
Huarte
31620
When was your project implemented?
Has your project benefited from EU programmes or funds?
Yes
Which programme(s) or fund(s)? Provide the name of the programme(s)/fund(s), the strand/action line as relevant and the year.
The first phase of the project Repensar la Periferia [Rethinking the Periphery], called Repensar el Contenedor [Rethinking the Container] has been created in the framework of the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP), moved by Europe Creative for the period 2015-2018. The project has been financed by the CAPP, through the Madrid based organisation Hablar en Arte, during the year 2017. The overall goal of CAPP was to improve and open up opportunities for artists who are working collaboratively across Europe. Throughout this programme, the French-German architect Salomé Wackernagel from the Berlin-based architecture collective Enter This was invited to a three-months residency in Huarte, Navarra, Spain. There, she met the architecture collective Orekari Estudio from Pamplona, composed by Xabi Urroz, Itxaso Iturrioz and Ioar Cabodevilla. The fructuous collaboration gave birth to the now long-lasting project Repensar la Periferia [Rethinking the Periphery].
In 2018, due to the exit of the first phase of the project, Repensar el Contenedor [Rethinking the Container], an extra-budget from the CAPP was allocated to the next step of our project Repensar la Periferia [Rethinking the Periphery], called Huarte¿Periferia?. Then, the remaining amount was used also in 2018 to invite the German, Berlin-based artist and researcher Susanne Bosch to observe the processes in the Etxabakoitz neighborhood, as an “external eyes”- resident to follow the process.
Hablarenarte’s CAPP touring exhibition Sharing Processes showcased in 2018 14 CAPP projects, in which visitors could get to know the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme CAPP through videos, texts, objects and photographs. A special focus at the exhibition in Huarte has been put on the residency project that Enter This and Orekari Estudio developed there in 2017.
The European Programm CAPP has been the necessary impulse and incubator of the project.
For more informations, see the website of the European Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme CAPP: https://www.cappnetwork.com/
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT
Please provide a summary of your project
Repensar la Periferia [Rethinking the Periphery] is an innovative cultural mediation project, built on the basis of an extensive urbanistic investigation, followed by a collaborative architectural process. Over the last four years, four emblematic places of the urban area of Pamplona, capital of the region of Navarra, Spain, have been explored by this process: the village of Huarte, the Grupo Urdánoz in the neighbourhood of Etxabakoitz, the new neighbourhood under construction of Soto Lezkairu, and the city of Zizur Mayor. Each of these four areas reveals a different facet of the urban environment, by exploring its limits.
The key element of the process is the activation of ephemeral, mobile or removable elements of cultural action. which have the double objective of democratising culture, and reinvest the public space.
We propose a reflection on the idea of the periphery and its influence on the social and cultural life of a community. On the basis of a collaborative and creative process, this project leads us to look for new ways of thinking about the outskirts, and about public places that are often neglected and ignored on the urban stage. The applied cultural, urban and architectural methodology can be used as a pilot process on a local, regional and European scale.
Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of sustainability and how these have been met
The implementation in the suburban areas takes place during a few months in every neighbourhood, in order to ensure the sustainability of the project. A cycle of workshops and events (participative creation workshops, conferences, screening-debates…) consolidate the visibility of the process on a long-term basis in the cultural landscape of the agglomeration of Pamplona. Foreign and local artists, architects and researchers have been invited to contribute to the project and exchange about their own experience of similar contexts on a national and international scale. The key element of the project is the activation of the mobile elements for cultural action that have been developed during all the four phases of the process.
In the first phase, we built the Tótems in Huarte. The figure of the greenhouse, transparent, and open, gradually emerged during the numerous field trips – dérives in the vegetable gardens of the agricultural periphery that prefigures the village of Huarte. The two Tótems were co-designed and built outside during open workshops in 2017. These mobile architectures, now used by the contemporary art centre of Huarte (CACH) and its artists, are polyhedral elements that allow cultural activities to be organised outside its walls. The idea was therefore to dematerialise the building, and make it exist by creating symbolic artefacts - the Tótems - whose metal framework ensures their durability, whose OSB wood furniture gives them a warm appearance, and whose transparent polycarbonate envelope and the plants on the roof refer to the huertas so much appreciated by the inhabitants as a symbol of their identity.
The inspiration of the agricultural greenhouses also refers to the architecture favoured by the architects Lacaton & Vassal, in which a previous collaboration within their office in Paris allowed us to understand the philosophy and the anchoring as citizens and architects, in a full respect of the context and the environment.
Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these have been met
The methodology of the process of has been improved during our on-site actions in the outskirt areas of Pamplona: investigate, assure transversal exchange between the different actors, organize open design and self-construction workshops in order to offer an horizontal and strategic redesign of public places. The teamwork, an understanding of duration that creates a stream of continuous flexible prototypes generates an architectural approach that is being tested until gaining satisfaction on an esthetical but also process level.
In Etxabakoitz, the researcher and artist Susanne Bosch described in her report our realisation: “The bubble intrigued through its beauty (…) bright colours of red, black and transparent and the clear shape of an oval majestic dome (…). It attracted people from all directions, people who saw the object from afar, people who called their friends to come and join, neighbours who were curious about its beautiful strange appearance.”
The aim of Repensar la Periferia in Etxabakoitz was to create a dreamlike space different from the existing modernist architecture, and to bring cultural events representative of the diversity of its inhabitants, ideally created with them. The Giant Bubble is a utopian space par excellence, that has been used in architecture since the 1960s – by the architects Buckminster Fuller and Hans-Walter Müller - also echoing in the local context the 1972 Pamplona Encounters in the middle of the Franco dictature. and the architecture created for the occasion by architect José Miguel de Prada Poole as a space of respiration in a middle of a muffled political space.
In Etxabakoitz, we were able to create an architecture unanimously approved by its inhabitants on the day of its inauguration. With the artists invited to activate the space in a collaborative mode, we sought to amplify the cultural potential of this usually isolated neighbourhood and created a space of expression and pride for the inhabitants.
Please give information about the key objectives of your project in terms of inclusion and how these have been met
We share a common vision from the beginning: involve the local population as much as possible, and to propose a resolutely contextual mode of action.
Through a reflection about the access to culture and fluid relationships between the different villages and suburbs, the project delves into the needs, demands and problems the inhabitants of these places live with on a daily basis in order to make collective proposals.
The history and context of each periphery are fundamental in that they highlight the cultural and social problems of these territories and their geographical, but also mental remoteness. In the case of the neighbourhood of Etxabakoitz, for example, the feeling of isolation from the rest of the city is palpable and the psychological barrier is very present. It has been built in a topographical hollow, with the monumental architecture of the adjacent factories, now mostly abandoned, as a skyline. The majority of the working-class population came from southern Spain - today many of their children have remained, and the neighbourhood is represented by a proud gypsy community.
Etxabakoitz is the most culturally diverse neighbourhood in Pamplona, but because of its history and low property prices, it suffers from a strong prejudice against the rest of the city. It is here that Repensar la Periferia has a major objective: not only to try to stimulate a collaborative and creative approach to the suburban public space, but also to create a back-and-forth movement.
With this process and the visibility given to these peripheral spaces, specific issues can return to the centre of the urban scene, and can be then re-evaluated by urban planners, the municipality and/or public decision-makers. In this sense, our independent collaborative architecture project in the outskirts, developed over a short period of time, with low resources and by proposing direct action, can potentially serve as a megaphone to revalue the invested public and peripheral spaces.
Please give information on the results/impacts achieved by your project in relation to the category you apply for
We experimented with the elaboration of the process, accepting the fact that the collaborative approach makes the project a living, fluid and unpredictable matter. As much as we have learned as architects to conceptualise a project while taking into account technical and economic constraints, the participatory aspect requires a letting go, a flexible and open methodology. In Huarte, we decided from the very beginning to go to the village square and meet its inhabitants.
In Soto Lezkairu, the urban plan for this neighbourhood under construction foresees the construction of 6,000 new homes. The unoccupied plots of land with tall grass and advertising panels (promoting the merits of the new housing units for sale next to them) seemed to us to be the ideal terrain to invest in an ephemeral architecture, while these were being built in turn. We imagined light structures - the Poliedros - that would be placed on these still vacant lots. The PVC tubes used to make the structure take up materials used in construction, as an echo of the surrounding building sites. The brand new urban grid of plots imagined for the Soto Lezkairu neighbourhood wipes out a pastoral landscape made up of small agricultural plots and wooded meadows.
With Repensar la Periferia, we have covered and will continue to cover a multitude of stories and contexts, moments of urbanism that have shaped lives. Above all, it is about making the peripheral dimension of the metropolis visible: the city, in its general sense, is made visible, told through its centre, which is the emblem, while thousands of people, in Pamplona and elsewhere, live and experience a completely different space on a daily basis.
Please explain the way citizens benefiting from or affected by the project and civil society have been involved in the project and what has been the impact of this involvement on the project
The objective of the initial residency named Repensar el Contenedor was to propose a collaborative project to change the perception that the inhabitants of Huarte have of their contemporary art centre. This building, with its black and opaque façade, disproportionate to its surroundings, stands at the entrance to the small town of Huarte. The construction is symbolic of the 2008 financial crisis that deeply affected Spain and highlights a phenomenon that is plaguing the suburban territory: the rapid construction of entire neighbourhoods. Here, the municipality of Huarte, formerly a small picturesque village on the route to Santiago de Compostela, has undergone rapid urban and demographic development over the last fifteen years.
We began by immersing ourselves fully in the context, allowing a sensitive approach to the territory. We began a series of contacts with artists, architects, members of local institutions, associations, and inhabitants of Huarte, in order to trace their own long-term experience, and more specifically in the context of our project, their story of disenchantment with Centro Huarte.
By exploring the phenomenon of the suburban city, which has developed in a sprawling manner over the last century, and is spreading ever further, horizontally, over abandoned territories or agricultural land that has been invested or made suitable for construction, the question of our living spaces is raised: towards which horizon do we look? What landscapes are emerging at the edges of our cities? How do the inhabitants of these peripheral spaces feel about their daily lives? Above all, these are stories of life, stories of love or loathing for a place that have been created there: what do these territories tell us about where new lives have been built in so-called peripheral spaces over the last few decades?
Please highlight the innovative character of the project
By making the outskirts visible through a process of reflection and of architectural and cultural action, we are inviting people to rethink the periphery, that is, to put on different glasses. Thus, we are trying to start a change of mentalities towards the suburban context(s). We hope that our work, which is currently being carried out in the metropolitan area of Pamplona, will be a milestone in changing the perception that one may have of these places of life by sublimating them through our architectural actions. Our involvement could be facilitated by a long-term cultural commitment on the part of institutions. On the other hand, we can put forward the hypothesis that this participative and collaborative mode of action, acting over a short period of time (due to its financing and operating methods) would be able, by its multiplication, to influence future urban planning decisions. These changes would be inspired by this approach - sensitive investigation, real exchanges on the field, concrete, small-scale actions - towards a more inclusive and respectful conception of these existing, and very much alive spaces (even though they are often defined as dormitory towns) of the city.
While we are focusing these peripheral spaces, we can start to ask ourselves which are the new models to explore, what is the living urban material that will be able to show a possible future for the city. In order to do this, our project is led to invest other horizons, to approach, in the era of climate change, the peripheral limit by reversing the anchor point: the villages, the rural life of Navarra, and why not other European territories? Rethinking another way of making the city. Towards the periphery and beyond.
Please explain how the project led to results or learnings which could be transferred to other interested parties
The widely shared imaginary of the European historic city has been built around a perception which comes from the middle age, even though the metropolis as a territorial formation has not stopped evolving. The fantasised medieval town has been transformed into a metropolis, with radically changed data and needs. This metropolis continues to develop in a concentric way around this historical centre, with a strategy of "nibbling" the territory, which in contemporary urban planning language is defined as urban sprawl. With the advent of the industrial age and the subsequent rural exodus, Europe saw its cities grow dramatically and its agricultural and wilderness areas shrink.
Our project Repensar la Periferia [Rethinking the Periphery] is set in the urban context of Pamplona, capital of the autonomous community of Navarra, Spain. The phenomenon of urban sprawl has a Europe-wide resonance but takes on a special dimension in Pamplona. The size and socio-historical context of Pamplona allow for a particularly clear analysis and understanding of the peripheral territory in all its forms, which are spread out here in a condensed area next to each other. Pamplona is therefore, due to its size and the history of its development, ideal for questioning, observing and proposing means of action for the periphery.
Based on this fascination for the outskirts of Pamplona, we have developed the project Repensar la Periferia , which was conceived on the scale of the city, then on the scale of the region, and why not extend it to the European scale.
Is an evaluation report or any relevant independent evaluation source available?
III. UPLOAD PICTURES
IV. VALIDATION
By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed project has not been proposed for the Awards more than once under the same category and that it has not been subject to any type of investigation, which could lead to a financial correction because of irregularities or fraud.
Yes