M2. Stategies of Action

Students gain a critical vision of the tools for intervention on the city for its sustainable transformation on three complementary scales or scenarios. The module stresses the ability to identify opportunities for action on urban flows and spaces based on these tools to improve urban metabolism.

First Semester
15 ECTS

M2.1. Regenerate

5 ECTS // Adolf Sotoca (ENG), Carles Llop (ES/CAT)
Course Guide

The course aims to cast a critical reflection on policies, strategies, and tools that drive contemporary urban regeneration processes. The content will be deployed in three of the main aspects that are currently widely discussed within urban studies and planning disciplines: environmental balance, spatial justice, and economic restructuring. The proposed methodology will set cross-readings between the concreteness of a Barcelonian case study and the more general framework defined by international authors and best-practice examples.

Participants in the course will acquire an in-depth understanding of urban planning tools and processes, as well as a wider critical view that may enable alternative approaches to present and future challenges. To that end, very active participation in design-based learning, as well as critical reading and reflection, will be required.

M2.2. Reinhabit

5 ECTS // Pere Fuertes (ENG), Magda Mària (ES/CAT)
Course Guide

Visions and strategies of intervention on architectural and urban spaces from the perspective of habitability, defined as the capacity to provide living conditions for the use of space and the performance of socially acceptable activities. Development of tools to generate a narrative on the compatibility between activities and spaces, as these vary, considering the built environment as a resource.

The aim is to reconsider intervention in the built environment from a specific reading of the potential for the occupation of space and hence redefine an adaptive, culturally sensitive, and multiscale habitability in which individuals and communities are actively involved.

M2.3. Refurbish

5 ECTS // Pablo Garrido, Fabián López (ENG), Albert Cuchí, Fabián López (ES/CAT)
Course Guide

Interpretation of existing buildings from four different and combined points of view: the physical scenario of architecture as a supplier of habitability, the role of construction elements in achieving the necessary physical and environmental conditions, the parallel lives of the architectural object and its consequences on the sustainable use of material resources.