Here you can have an overview of the content of the master:

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We are receiving applications for the 2011-12 program which is organized by the ESARQ School of Architecture and the Faculty of Humanities at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. Review the requirements for admission and apply online.

En un post reciente, hablamos de la importancia del dibujo como herramienta para estudiar, conocer y comprender las ciudades. Manuel Arenas y Guillem Carabí comparten aquí nuevamente algunos dibujos de Barcelona, que forman parte de la asignatura Visions Urbanes de la ESARQ UIC.

Dibujo de Roger Guardia i Marti.

Dibujo de Nei

José Luque Valdivia comenta en su artículo Del Dibujo de Ciudad a la Ciudad Dibujada:

Dibujamos la ciudad para conocerla; identificamos con el dibujo los valores urbanos; con él exploramos y proyectamos la nueva ciudad; y a través de él discutimos y valoramos nuestros proyectos de ciudad.

El dibujo nos permite reducir la complejidad inabarcable de la realidad urbana a una imagen asequible sobre la que operar. El dibujo se configura así como un instrumento indispensable para el proyecto; pero un instrumento que lleva inseparablemente unido un riesgo innegable: el peligro de confundir dibujo y proyecto; y aún más, dibujo y realidad. Los arquitectos y los urbanistas han sido conscientes de ese peligro, pero esa prevención no siempre ha evitado el error.

Por eso consideramos el dibujo como una importante herramienta para nuestro máster Barcelona Relacional, ya que a través de él, establecemos una relación directa con la ciudad, al intentar entenderla e interpretarla, para luego reflejarla por medio del dibujo.

Dibujo de Atocha Vazquez Dodero

En un post acerca de las Libretas de Notas de Lebbeus Woods, podemos leer:

La mayoría de nosotros [tanto si somos arquitectos como si no], nos sentiremos familiarizados con el hecho de llevar encima una libreta de notas, sea una Moleskine o aquella agenda de hace dos años en la que aún quedan páginas en blanco para plasmar nuestra visión de viajes, edificios, exposiciones, sueños y utopías.

También Le Corbusier nos dejó un vasto compendio de dibujos y sketches, a partir de los cuales interpretaba las ciudades, para luego encontrar el diseño adecuado a cada espacio. Esta relación emocional que establecemos con las ciudades al momento de dibujarlas (como Woods, Le Corbusier y tantos otros), nos permite darle a la ciudad un significado que sólo por medio del propio dibujo podemos llegar a conocer.

Georges Perec intentó “atrapar” las ciudades a través de la escritura, como hace en su libro Especies de Espacios, en el cual escribe:

El objeto de este libro no es exactamente el vacío, sino más bien lo que hay alrededor, o dentro. Pero, en fin, al principio, no hay gran cosa: la nada, lo impalpable, lo prácticamente inmaterial: la extensión, lo exterior, lo que es exterior a nosotros, aquello en medio de lo cual nos desplazamos, el medio ambiente, el espacio del entorno.

Y creemos que de esa misma forma que Perec lo describe, a través del dibujo se puede llegar a palpar lo impalpable de los entornos urbanos, de las ciudades.

Dibujo de Lluís-Gas Duart

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Otras lecturas recomendadas: El Croquis como herramienta en la oficina

La ciudad ya no puede ser un lugar pensado desde las reglas, sino un espacio vivido desde los principios.

Ya han pasado muchos años desde que se ha podido constatar el fracaso de planificar las ciudades a medio y largo plazo. Quizás este sistema fuera pertinente a principios del siglo XIX donde todavía se podía planificar atendiendo a curvas de crecimientos predecibles y comportamientos sociales estables. Hoy a principios del siglo XXI está ya claro que crear regulaciones es tan absurdo como pensar que lo que hoy es válido lo será también pasado mañana. La ciudad depende en mayor medida del comportamiento y el uso del entramado urbano que de la constitución física específica de cada calle, cada acera, cada edificio. Naturalmente hay secciones de calle que restringen un comportamiento “urbano” o malbaratan una lógica de lo “común” y en cambio otros dispositivos urbanos favorecen el desarrollo de la identidad (tanto individual como compartida) o ayudan al florecimiento de acontecimientos urbanos que establecen vínculos emocionales con sus habitantes.

Aquí podéis ver el texto completo y descargar el PDF:

Texto de Miquel Lacasta, Coordinador del Master Programme Relational Barcelona. Other ways to conceive the plural city

City Centered Festival is a free, three-day festival of locative media and urban community in San Francisco. The event included demonstrations and installations in the Tenderloin district, a symposium in the Mission district and community training workshops, and it just took place in June 2010.

We want to make an overview on the work that the MIT SENSEable Cities presented there. You already know about our deep interest in the use of new and innovative tools to explore and research the concept of “relational city“, so let’s take a look:

Since 2003, MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory has been investigating how emerging digital technologies can be employed to make cities more livable, sustainable and efficient. We recognize that the digital revolution has lent our cities a new layer of functionality and that now is the time to explore how sensors, cellphones, micro-controllers and networks of other handheld devices can be used to more effectively manage city infrastructure, optimize transportation, analyze our environmental impact and foster new communities. Some of the projects are:

New York Talk Exchange

Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York Talk Exchange asks the question: How does the city of New York connect to the global conversation? Using phone and IT data, the images reveal the real time connections between various boroughs and the countries they connect to. More info, here.

iSpots

The iSPOTS project aims at describing changes in living and working at MIT by mapping the dynamics of the wireless network in real-time. Thus, the complex and dispersed individual movement patterns that make up the daily life of the campus can be revealed, helping TO answer many questions: Which physical spaces are preferred for work in the MIT community? How could future physical planning of the campus suit the community’s changing needs? Which location-based services would be most helpful for students and academics?

Also, as many cities around the world are launching extensive wireless initiatives, the analysis of the MIT environment could provide valuable insights for the future. Will today’s MIT be tomorrow’s norm? More info, here.

Trash Track

Have you ever wondered where your trash goes? MIT researchers attached tags to trash to track it. Some trash is provincial, expiring not far from home, while other objects travel great distances to be disposed of.

Trash Track has received wide attention in the national and international press. It has been deployed in several U.S. cities, including Seattle and New York. More info, here.

These are just some of the projects developed by the SENSEable CityLab, you can see all of their projects at their web-site. And don’t forget our aims and interest at the Master Programme:

It is real that in the current times, we all teach and learn at the same time, and if we are able to support our academic research using all this tools which are part of everyday life, we are confident that the results will be one step closer to understanding our cities in a better way. That’s why we decided to include, as part of the global price of the Master Programme, an iPad for each student, that they will receive when the programme starts and we will use it to document our workshops and itineraries around the city and to develop mapping tools that reinforce our learning path.

More info about the Master Programme and web-site for registration, here.

What will our world be like in 2050? ARUP’s new set of 175 cards investigates leading drivers in greater depth that have particular relevance to our on-going urban history. They include energy, waste, climate change, water, demographics, urbanisation and poverty. The cards can be used for developing business strategy, brainstorming, education and to help the reader to gain greater knowledge of the issues which are driving global change.

The educative potential of this low-tech system is really valueble as a complementary tool for the academic approach. As they say:

Each card depicts a single driver. A factoid and rhetorical question are on one face, backed up by a brief indication of the breadth and depth of the content on the other face. The set was devised by the Foresight & Innovation team at Arup, a group tasked with exploring emerging trends and how they impact upon business of Arup and its clients. The publication serves not only as a vibrant visual record of research, but also as a tool for discussion groups, personal prompts, for workshop events or as a “thought for the week”.

More info of Drivers of Change here and about Arup Foresight project, here.

El dibujo es una buena herramienta de conocimiento de la ciudad. En la asignatura Visions Urbanes de la ESARQ UIC cuyos responsables son Manuel Arenas y Guillem Carabí, ambos del equipo de dirección y coordinación de nuestro Máster Barcelona Relacional, se estudia como el dibujo nos puede ayudar a comprender las ciudades.

Al dibujar una ciudad, no solo captamos su representación física. La comunicación entre el espacio que se observa y el observador, toca también aspectos sensoriales y emocionales de lo que aquel espacio transmite y, al plasmarlos en el papel, estamos dando un paso más allá para la comprensión de la ciudad observada. Estamos relacionándonos con la ciudad.

Hoy hemos encontrado un texto interesante en Arkinet, que habla acerca de las narrativas para comunicar arquitectura. ¿Podríamos hablar en el mismo sentido acerca de la comprensión de las ciudades?

¿De qué otra forma, si no a través de la poética de la literatura y el dibujo, seríamos capaces de comunicar la emoción que nos produce una sombra, un filtro de luz? ¿Cómo contar lo que se siente al andar el paisaje urbano? Como dice Ramiro Aznar: “En este caso las suelas de mis zapatos serían los pinceles, las aceras el lienzo y el rastro la cartografía urbana.”

Dibujos de: Manuel Arenas.

We recently found out this book, that is somehow related with our programme and want to share some of the ideas that Luuk Boelens had in mind when writing the book. Described with these words:

The Urban Connection develops a promising actor-relational approach to urban planning. With respect to the usual governmental planning, it is focused outside in, instead of inside out. It derives its leitmotif from the actual debate about state controlled versus neo-liberal planning and reflects on innovative post structuralist scholars in the field of planning, economics, social geography and governance.

The publishers, 010 share at their site some pages of the book. We have taken from there the preface, written by Jacqueline Cramer [Minister of the Environment and Spatial Planning]:

“An internet saying runs as follows: It’s not them, it’s just a whole lot of us. As I see it, this also applies to the spatial layout of our country. It’s not them that determine the layout, but us.

In this book, Luuk Boelens researches the relationship between the various actors in spatial development. So just who are we, and what do we do? In regional development, governmental authorities co-operate with the market on the policy of doing things ‘decentrally wherever possible’. With the New Law on Spatial Development, the mutual relationships between governmental authorities have become clearer and other involved parties have gained a firmer foothold. At the same time, the notion of ‘doing things centrally where necessary’ must be legally established in policy.

The state is investing in co-operation with other governing bodies, market parties and residents. I wish to expand this collaboration further. In this context, scientific study is important to ensure good foundations. Accordingly, the publication of this book is a welcome addition to the body of knowledge of this subject.

For sustainable development, it is essential to involve the inhabitants of a region in the planning schedules. The future user should actually be invited to join the planners at the discussion table right from the outset. The district of Room beek in Enschede is an excellent example of this. The residents had a loud voice in the planning process. The state contributed by providing the funding. Residents, companies and the municipality examined the wishes for the new neighbourhood and worked together from the plan-forming to the implementation stages. The result is a sustainable housing estate that is interesting in architectonic terms, with much private clientship, and with social housing, various facilities, activities and culture.

Research provides invaluable information. Trial projects lead to an efficient working method which, in turn, leads to a good result. Science helps advance real-life practice. This book supplies insight into such processes, and is the consequence of a five-year study by professor Dr. Ir. Luuk Boelens at the vrom Chair of ‘Scientific Applications in Spatial Planning’ at the University of Utrecht.

I expect this book to supply even more inspiration for the co-operation between the many parties involved in regional planning.”

-Text by Jacqueline Cramer

More info at 010 Publishers and an interesting review at UrbanTick.

Fuente: Discovery Channel

This is the first of a series of coming posts by which we’re going to explain the contents and goals of our Master Programme as part of a global approach in which technologic and relational links interact in order to better understand our cities and why we decided to provide each student with an iPad as an academic tool.

A few days ago, Fabian Neuhaus made this question: How do we identify our selves with the spaces we use and how do we navigate with the many obstacles the urban environment contains?

He pointed:

Living in the city means to constantly negotiate spaces as well as navigate space. This becomes more difficult under the density aspect as well as the mobility aspects. Also the cycles of change are very short and frequent adaptations require constant reorientation. Aspects of repetition and routine play an important role in the navigation of everyday situations. Being familiar with the aspects makes this task a lot easier. However, as soon as there are changes, new features or temporary obstacles, those have to be integrated.

There are projects like the Mobile 3D City, developed by the same team behind the Paris 3D application on the iPhone. They just released a movie detailing a 3D City dataset from Blom running on an iPad:

It is important to note that concepts like territoriality, mapping, walkspaces, will be important topics in our Master Programme and we intend to use innovative tools to support the workshops and lectures that are part of our research. A host of handheld devices and applications now promise to endow individual perception with the experience of a long-time local and the knowledge of an educated specialist, as refered by Mitchell Schwarzer.

Schwarzer enphasize that two developments stand out with respect to our sense of place, and he adds:

First, as real world activities migrate online, consumers are turning into producer/consumers. The kind of top-down, high or mass culture epitomized by the museum, newspaper or television is dissolving amid a plethora of platforms for communication and entertainment, many of which are generated by individuals and their online communities. Second, in any given locale, the network is augmenting reality. In our pocket we can carry anywhere an encyclopedic library and archive, a knowledge-screen that can be superimposed on our visual field to deepen its appearance along the vectors of our shifting inclinations.

This lead us to another interesting video: UpNext 3D Cities [San Francisco video demo]. You can “walk” on San Francisco’s streets in full 3D using an iPad:

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It is real that in the current times, we all teach and learn at the same time, and if we are able to support our academic research using all this tools which are part of everyday life, we are confident that the results will be one step closer to understanding our cities in a better way. That’s why we decided to include, as part of the global price of the Master Programme, an iPad for each student, that they will receive when the programme starts and we will use it to document our workshops and itineraries around the city and to develop mapping tools that reinforce our learning path.