Moll de la Fusta Corridor

Creating Connections
The current state of Moll de la Fusta encourages traffic to flow in one direction only. Pedestrians and cyclists in particular, are faced with the decision of which path they will take at either end of the street. Once the decision to walk along the water, the boardwalk above, or alongside the buildings it is rare and unlikely that they will cross back and forth the multiple lanes of traffic to fully experience the area. There is a series of vertical barriers and changes in elevation which discourage or make impossible this type of zigzag path across the lanes of traffic.

The proposal focuses on creating new and easily accessible paths which connect the various highlighted areas, including Placa del Duc de Medinaceli, the waterfront, estatua de Colom and the square which extends from the Post Office to the Green space on Moll d’Espanya. The proposal aims to integrate the fabric of the city with these current points of connectivity and access/egress. The steep vertical barriers which denied accessibility, are now smooth and gentle transitions at various levels and allow for different views of the port and city.

Enhancing & Encouraging Green Environments
Green space in Barcelona is scarce, about 10% or approximately 18m2 per capita. The green space is unevenly divided and not easily accessible to everyone, with a large portion of it located in Park Montjuic. The impermeable surfaces of the city extend along the entire length of the waterfront and port until the beach.

The proposal aims to increase the permeable surface area and provide a green area which invites everyone to use it as they wish. The increase in green space and corridors would decrease storm and rainwater runoff in the area and could include several methods for harvesting the water to support the vegetation. The intent is to encourage biodiversity, create new microclimates and encourage responsible water management.

Public Access
The city has already done a good job of promoting mixed modes of transportation through implementation of shared biking, bike lanes, large pedestrian pathways and vehicular routes. The focus of this seems to be largely about the efficiency and safety which is also important. These arteries of the city however encourage only these things and have not created a place for lingering, enjoying or experiencing.

The proposal has identified and stressed the various access points and inlets/outlets of the artery and how one could connect these points in a manner which invites new ways of experiencing the waterfront and edge of the city. It enhances the view of the city with the elevated green corridors and creates a type of “front yard” to the city which people can enjoy the journey as they pass from one point to the next or spend time in between using a low cost and low maintenance strategy.

PLATFORMS

These platforms can be rise or lower according to the event, the function, the season, or weather, and they could

be only a huge surface to host a sports event like a professional tennis match or a huge swimming pool for a dive

exhibition or swimming competitions.

Also could be glass boxes that will have interiors where a viewer, a bar or a restaurant, or other kind of events, like a fashion show could happen in there. Or they could only have an ornamental function, having a forest of

palm trees on it, or a water fall, or a cascade of vegetal species.

The last will be dedicated to the environmental issue, and will have on it wind mills, or photovoltaic cells.

Luis Enrique Anaya - Daniel Azerrat - Rafael Cohen - Maricela Galán - Ahmed Ibrahimpasic

Moll de la Fusta

Integrative Urbanization

Lina Abou Reslan, Michal Doukarsky, Federico Escalante, Hernando Gomez, Joris Moonen

Taking a primordial walk along the shore of Moll de la Fusta left us with two strong impressions; first, that this is not the seafront, rather a vague part of the city with a dominant car parking that overlooks a yacht parking surrounded by a mall complex. The second impression is that all developments in this zone have been a series of parallel developments of streets and promenades on different levels with a few plug-on bridges to link these layers. This development ‘along’ rather than ‘within’ the Moll de la Fusta is probably due to the influence of the infrastructure (Ronda Litoral) and the false conception that this is seafront.

We propose to approach this area from a more integrative perspective, suspending the belief that it a seafront, linking it to the city physically and functionally, inviting a richer diversity of events and programs that can attract diverse groups of people (tourists and residents) and simultaneously providing the local municipality an opportunity to enhance the project of propagating an ‘alternative lifestyle’ image of Barcelona already underway. Hence the general headline of this proposal is to URBANIZE Moll de la Fusta, in four steps:

• Building a large urban theme-park, unique to Barcelona, in order to infuse the area with events, attract visitors and give Barcelona a new landmark in its skyline.
• Creating a zone of boat housing, long-term (as an extension for Barceloneta) and touristic (closer to the theme park.)
• Extending the Ramblas walkway through a floating deck that leads to the sea outside this urbanized zone. This deck can have multiple layers of program below to service some functions and events that can take place on top.
• Building low housing and commercial units, and implementing a landscaping strategy to create shaded, pleasant human scale public spaces.

With an integrative urban planning approach, Moll de a Fusta becomes a multi-layered event-city; a space where events, people, water and land come together.

Resiprocal Permeability: Let the Sea Come Inside the City

Love not too well the work of thy hands and the devices of thy heart; and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West, and cometh from the Sea.

~J.R.R. Tolkien,The Silmarillion~

 There is in that land a haven that is named Avallónë, for it is of all cities the nearest to Valinor, and the tower of Avallónë is the first sight that the mariner beholds when at last he draws nigh to the Undying Lands over the leagues of the Sea.

~J.R.R. Tolkien,The Silmarillion~

The first land creatures were fish that could turn their fins to paws. More and more fish move to the land, especially the young. The land-dwellers change and adapt, separating the more fish-like from the reptilian. Qfwfq's family is almost all dwelling on the land. Only Qfwfq's great-uncle, N'ba N'ga, still lives in the water.

“The Aquatic Uncle”  - Italo Calvino

The Sea, the Land, and the Land-dwellers

If men believe in reincarnation and the oneness of spirit, could it be possible that we would all remember of what Calvino said about our being on the land? Or maybe, by chance – it was by a risen deepest memory that Tolkien wrote about the land beyond the sea in the Silmarillion?

The fact that the sea-water covered two-third of the earth is something quite recognizable, that sometimes – by ignorance, we fear her so greatly and walked away from her grasp. Yet somehow, we longed for her nice cuddle and look for a gentle wave that comes along the beach. We, the land-dwellers change and adapt. We change and we move, adapt and defensive – that at some point we reject the fact that the land was and always be part of the sea.

Walking along the Gothic quarter in old Barcelona, one might wonder of when would she reach an opening where she could see the sea. The dwellers itself, the people live in the neighborhood – might already be so used to the view and one perspective of what the streets would bring at the end. The routines and perfect layering are what we could see when we reach a section of Ronda Litoral and space that stretched along Passeig de Colom from Colon Statue to Via Laietana. Moll de la Fusta, as all the touristic advertisement would calls it.  A very well-designed space, if I may say – for circulation and connectivity – of the LAND.

Moll de la Fusta

·         Moll: Catalan - Noun

moll m (plural molls)

1.       quay, jetty

2.       breakwater

·         Fusta: Catalan – Noun

From Latin fustis.

fusta f (plural fustes)

wood

 “Moll de la Fusta” = Wooden Quay; Wooden Wave Breaker?

Is there any wave here that we need a wave breaker? Where is the sea, anyway? What can we possibly sense in this kind of space? Is the city stands next to the sea? Is that why we’re so concern about the EDGE of this city and playing around try to build a perfect wall? We, the land-dwellers – are so proud that we forgot that the city we built, stands accidentally on a piece of land on the sea - that rise a couple more meters so that it slightly higher than the sea level. The ignorance is so great that we also believe that the sea is not a liveable place. 

What if…

What if… the wave breaker becomes the water gate? What if… the landscape view of this part of land merges with the other part that reflects them? What if… the EDGE that is actually imaginary – becomes ENTRANCE? 

A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.

Martin Heidegger, “Building, dwelling, thinking”

 Imagine to live where there are no such thing called the EDGE of the city, where the city being a part of the sea and the sea as part of the city; where the landscape view is intact.

Proposal.

1.        Put a reflection on the view of the sea seen from Moll de la Fusta onto the building façade along the way
2.        Open the city for the sea to enter and change the wooden wave breaker into sea water gate

Strategies

Provocation Campaign: postcards about the proposal, distributed to people especially those in the neighborhood. 

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

There’s no such thing as what we called the EDGE,

When the Metropolis stand as an osmosis membrane

And the reciprocal landscape stretched along the lane…

per·me·a·bil·i·ty/ˌpərmēəˈbilitē/Noun
1.       The state or quality of a material or membrane that causes it to allow liquids or gases to pass through it.
2.       Permeability or connectivity describes the extent to which urban forms permit (or restrict) movement of people or vehicles in different directions

Intervention Proposal

for Metropolis - In-situ 2011

Agnes Stephania___Lilach Gibori

Muchas gracias a:

Tuhan YME

Lina Aboureslan and her kitchen

IN SITU BCN 2011_Metropolis_CCB-UPC-FPC

“New ideas for the edge the historic city, Moll de la Fusta in transformation”

PROFESSORS:

Ernest Ferré: www.domingoferre.com; domingoferre@terra.es

Juan Carlos Sanchez Tappan: www.espacio-sofar.org; jcst@espacio-sofar.org

Agenda: In Situ 2011 analyzed, researched and discussed the present and future role of the limits between the old city center and the sea front. “Moll de la Fusta”

CHALLENGE:

Students working on teams of 2-3 people developed graphical documents as a critical tool to rethink the current and proposed character and condition of the limit area. “Graphical documents as Critical reports“ to communicate on site observations, analysis, and research transformed into an alternative proposals and/or provocation strategies.

Student work referred to the current city urban debate associated with the choosen site. In addition proposals were contrasted with this year edition of Europan 11 (http://www.europan-europe.com/e11/en/home/) debate on how to inhabit the edge of the city and the resonance between territories.

www.bcn.es

www.gencat.es

http://www.miesbcn.com/es/BD_es.html