The project unites and goes hand in hand with a collective hope: the revival of a square, Plaça del Carme in old town of Olot. The approach was like acupuncture, a catalogue of actions to give new life to that which already exists, improving urban comfort, invigorating ground floors and highlighting heritage. It is a project of projects. It started by reformulating the commission, allocating 70% of the budget to ground floors, essential for the vitality, comfort and safety of the public space.
Local
Spain
Olot
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2021-12-23
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Eduard Last name: Callís Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Carrer Sant Josep de Calassanç, 2 Town: Olot Postal code: 17800 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 680 75 26 66 E-mail:unparell@unparelldarquitectes.cat Website:https://www.unparelldarquitectes.cat
First name: Guillem Last name: Moliner Gender: Male Nationality: Spain If relevant, please select your other nationality: France Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Carrer Sant Josep de Calassanç, 2 Town: Olot Postal code: 17800 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 650 54 58 30 E-mail:unparell@unparelldarquitectes.cat Website:https://www.unparelldarquitectes.cat/
The project unites and goes hand in hand with a collective hope: the revival of a square, Plaça del Carme. The approach was like acupuncture, a catalogue of actions to give new life to that which already exists, improving urban comfort, invigorating ground floors and highlighting heritage. It is a project of projects, with 3 developers and 8 shopkeepers. It started by reformulating the commission for municipal city planning, allocating 70% of the budget to ground floors, essential for the vitality, comfort and safety of the public space. The project also included the opening of the city's Art School and the modernisation of an old warehouse for the cooperative l'Artiga. The approach was similar to acupuncture, like a catalogue of actions that add complexity and depth to the relationships between the street and the ground floors. This catalogue considered planting deciduous trees to complement the façades, the lighting of the street from the perimeter and from the insides, converting empty openings into alcoves to exhibit sculptures from the Art School and overhauling shop windows to endow them with the most transparency possible and bring them into dialogue with the street. During the nine months that works lasted, the 'Carme office' was set up in the square, where we cooked up ideas on how to reactivate the space. This was the meeting point for neighbours, shopkeepers, owners and technicians. Dividing the project into stages ensured we could adapt it to any new needs detected. In a single year, 1000 m² of shops were opened and 120 m of façades were redesigned.
urban regeneration
ground floor
public space
memory
community
Sustainability is approached from three key aspects of the project: the reformulation of the commission, a punctual repair with reused elements and the co-responsibility in maintenance. Plaça del Carme had been reformed at the end of the 20th century with a single-level pavement and new urban installations. The requested comprehensive renewal was deemed completely unnecessary. In addition, no matter how well-intentioned and delicate this work was, it would hardly have had the desired dynamization capacity if it did not include the ground floors. For this reason, it is proposed to allocate 70% of the budget to the activation of the ground floors. The remaining budget is mainly invested in mitigating the heat island effect -opening up large parterres with shrubs and deciduous trees- and in reducing the lighting energy consumption. The project is approached from acupuncture, as a catalog of actions. They are limited, precise and low-cost interventions that, when coordinated, have the capacity to catalyze a far-reaching transformation. In all of them, it is prioritized the use and enhancement of existing elements in the place or pieces that have been forgotten in municipal warehouses, even though a priori they have little value. In this way, the slabs extracted for the opening of new tree pits are reused to repair the damaged parts. The anodyne streetlights are restored with the intervention of the visual artist Quim Domene. Three sculptures by Miquel Blay, hidden in the museum warehouse, are moved to the School of Art. For its part, L'Artiga consumer cooperative occupies an old factory with minimal intervention, based on a perfectible furniture system. Building a community with a sense of belonging and public-private cooperation has led to a shared responsibility for maintenance.
Local commerce, food and visual arts define the atmosphere of the revitalized square, with the aim of strengthening the sense of belonging. Based on the premise that the activity and character of the street depends on the façades and what happens behind them, the urban renewal of these spaces inevitably involves the mobilisation of the bank of empty ground floor premises. We operate to go with maximum transparency for shop windows, removing vinyl sheets, reorganising furniture and installing neon signs. The opening of new businesses is encouraged, in which L'Artiga stands out, for being an open consumer cooperative and a meeting place for local producers. This shop joins La Fogaina or Can Morera, forming a cluster of green and local food. The Art School is decisive in the industrial and cultural development of Olot. It was founded in the 18th century, training artisans for the design of printed fabrics and saints. Notable decorators and several generations of landscape painters - known as “Olot school” - emerged from it. This has built a society sensitive to the visual arts. The Art School building dominated over the square with a completely blind ground floor. With this intervention, it opens up to the city by uncovering three large arcades and reorganizing the interior. Now the screen printing and engraving workshop faces the street and displays three sculptures -L'Educació, Al•legoria de Madrid and La Llei- donated by Miquel Blay to the center. The alcoves are designed with a stage background with a false perspective and “sky”. This intervention is repeated in the three openings in the loft of a shop, which resolved a common problem: opaque first floor storerooms. At the same time, Quim Domene revalues the existing lampposts with a print based on the printed fabrics that gave rise to the founding of the School, and contributes to the restoration of the l'Artiga façade, recovering the iconography of the decorator Xavier Bulbena.
Plaça del Carme was one of the most dynamic public spaces in the town, where shops and the Art School coexisted with factories and warehouses. The displacement of the center and the social changes had placed the square in frontier terrain, with many empty ground floor premises, a feeling of insecurity and a general atmosphere of discouragement. Plaça del Carme connects the historic center of Olot with the main avenue of a neighborhood with a 43% foreign-born population. This punctual transformation thus attends to the city scale and appeals to a problem of social segregation. It was necessary to turn an empty border space into a relationship node, capable of building a sense of belonging, regardless of origin. Local commerce, food and visual arts become the factors of attraction. It is a project for all the citizens of Olot and the region, establishing an active node that promotes the relationship between socially segregated neighborhoods; for the residents of the historic center, improving the comfort, vitality and safety of the street thanks to the activation of the ground floors, revaluing the heritage and reinforcing the self-esteem of living in the heart of the town; for shopkeepers, improving the relationship of their stores with the street; for the entrepreneurs and members of l'Artiga, encouraging the establishment of new businesses and reinforcing a local and ecological food cluster; for the students and teachers of the Art School, inviting them to spread their vitality and creativity to the street. The success of the transformation and the subsequent care of the space lies in the construction of a community with an active role throughout the entire process, from the analysis to the execution of the work and its maintenance. It includes citizens, teachers and merchants of different origins: some have lived there allways, others have recently arrived.
The renovation of Plaça del Carme is prioritized by the Neighborhood Council of the historic center, taking into account its representativeness and level of abandonment. It is a collective illusion. The work starts from the analysis of the actions foreseen in the Comprehensive Action Plan of the City Centre (2018), which at the time was already the result of a participatory process. Immediately, it is considered the need to incorporate a group of people more closely connected to the plaza. It is here where a coordinated work between neighbours, merchants and administration begins and where the technicians assume the role of catalysts for relationships between people and ideas. Once the objectives are agreed upon, the work of this motor group is key to linking the owners of empty properties with possible entrepreneurs interested in opening businesses and also for the improvement of active businesses. This is a process that lasts longer than the conventional drafting of a project, also happening to meet with the confinement due to the pandemic. For this reason, an open and inclusive design is conceived and the work is divided into four phases to be carried out in nine months. Observations derived from each stage and new opportunities are incorporated into the next phase. That is to say, the usual separation between project and work disappears, being a continuous process. For a year, the technical team is present daily in the square. The "office" located on the street becomes the meeting place for arranged meetings, but also for encounters by chance. The unexpected is also part of the result. The process has contributed to building a community with a sense of belonging. As a result, these people are willing to take responsibility of their own maintenance of the plaza. The school janitor takes care of the green areas, a neighbour sweeps the sidewalk every morning, an active group continues to look for a tenant for the only space that remains empty...
Good morning, Carme! is a strictly local project. It attracts a large number of interested parts due to its accompanying role of a collective illusion. On the one hand, the Neighbourhood Council of the historic centre that selects the proposal as a priority, on the other, the group of residents who collaborate in the process of diagnosis, design, work and maintenance, a group of municipal technicians and councillors, 8 merchants and 3 promoters. The collaborative nature of this process and the construction of a shared illusion attracted more agents and made it possible to double the investment initially planned, reaching 470,000 euros. Thus, together with the initial promoter, which is the town hall, the Art School joins the community and finances the project which transforms the interiors of the ground floor so that it can be opened up to the city, L’Artiga consumer cooperative occupies an old warehouse and other businesses open or are renewed in the square. In addition, the company Simon Group, native to the town, also collaborates with the restoration of the existing lampposts, with the replacement of lights with led technology and financing the intervention of the visual artist Quim Domene. The construction also has the collaboration of the Garrotxa's Museum and the municipal brigade. The project operates with a surgical character, incorporating elements that have the capacity to catalyze a change on a larger scale. This is the most efficient way to get the most out of the available budget.
The process begins with a diagnosis of the square in which take part neighbours and merchants, a person in charge of the Comprehensive Action Plan of the City Centre, a social educator, teachers from the Art School, a historian from the Historical Archive, councillors and technicians of the municipal departments of social services, information on the territory, urban planning and economic promotion. A visual artist, a team of engineers, a lighting designer and a structural calculator set up into the first design phase.
The work began with an open design, which was modified according to the agents that joined and the opportunities detected. For this reason, meetings with specialists from different disciplines were held in the street. This also allowed encounters by chance and opened the door to new collaborations.
The search for entrepreneurs to occupy empty premises was carried out by the residents, who contacted the owners through the architects, Dinàmig (municipal economic promotion agency) or some councillors. In the restoration of the lampposts we worked with the visual artist Quim Domene, the Art School and the Simon Group design team. The same visual artist also collaborated advising on the restoration of some facades and on the set design of the shop windows of the Art School. Teachers, technicians from the Museum of La Garrotxa, workers from the municipal brigade, curtain experts and lighting designers participated in this centre. They were also in charge of the light design of the square. For the vegetation, an agronomist from Sigma (local environmental agency) collaborated. The L’Artiga members took part in the refurbishment the cooperative new supermarket, both in the design phase and in some stages of the repair. The Local Occupation Plan collaborated with final painting works.
The construction process with its four phases began in March 2021 and ended in December of the same year (doc. 1). In a single year, 1000 m² of shops were opened and 120 m of façades were redesigned in the area of the square (doc. 2). For their part, the students of the Art School use the square as a space for the celebration of a market of works as the final act of the course (doc. 3), and a group of residents has once again organized the traditional neighbourhood festivity in July 2022, which had been lost due to lack of involvement (doc. 4). The flow measurement system installed in the historic center recorded between 2019 and 2021 a general drop in pedestrians at all accesses in the historic center. (doc. 5). The Plaza del Carme (with measurement to the Plaza del Conill) is one of the only two exceptions, going from a capacity of 5,792 to 5,895 people. Beyond these data, the feeling of comfort and self-esteem of the citizens who live in the square has increased. On the occasion of a conference on urban planning with a gender perspective, a visit was made to different spaces in the center of the city. In this square, some people agreed that before they avoided going through it, and instead, now, thanks to the increased activity and the elimination of dark corners, they felt safe going through it at any time of the day or night. This activation has helped to break a psychological barrier between two parts of the city, attracting citizens who until now did not go beyond the Main Square. What was before an empty space that separated neighborhoods with very different social realities now becomes a place of relationship. The renovation of this square is also the beginning of a repair to the social segregation that the city is experiencing. The project has been awarded at the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2022) and at the FAD Awards (2021). It has been published in general and specialized media.
The improvement of the public space from the ground floors, the construction of a character that is the result of the sum of opportunities with the valorization of the memory of the place and a collaborative and open work process explain the innovative nature of the project. The action required an additional effort of conception, management, coordination and collaborative process at street level. In its execution, the level of innovation does not imply any additional extra cost, becoming less than the sum of independent sectoral actions. As a result of this, and considering its high level of effectiveness, it presents a higher performance than partial actions.
The project has been awarded at the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2022) and at the FAD Awards (2021). It has also been shortlisted in the Architecture Awards of the Higher Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain and selected in the European Prize for Urban Public Space. The jury for the FAD award appreciated: “The reactivation of the Plaza del Carme in Olot combines a number of strategies that go beyond urbanization. The ground floors are incorporated as an essential asset of the public space, and draw a new transition scenario, benefiting the use of the public to the private. Thus, the opening of the Escola d'Art towards the square, the conversion of an old industrial unit into the L'Artiga cooperative, the changes in the traffic sings or the interventions that incorporate sculptures and scenarios in the shop windows, transform and activate the space public. It is a sum of interventions that act on the commercial abandonment of the ground floors and the degradation of central neighborhoods, a common situation in many medium-sized cities”.
The methodology of the project is relative and is based on four main pillars: the detection of opportunities, the construction of a motor community, an open and inclusive design and the division into construction phases. The first phase of diagnosis incorporates the experience and ambitions of residents and merchants, recognition at street level, available data and parameters, and historical research based on bibliography and archival documents. Based on all these aspects, a map is configured that relates the weaknesses with the opportunities and establishes the main objectives. At the same time, the construction of a community with a shared illusion is crucial, which will be decisive in all phases, from diagnosis to subsequent follow-up, through the design and evolution of the work. The community will be made up of citizens and municipal technicians of reference. In order to couple new opportunities to the work, the result of the work of the motoring community, it is crucial that the design of the project be open and that the work be divided into four phases. Precisely the start of the works is an incentive to the motoring community. The division into phases allows the project to be adjusted by incorporating the opportunities that arise in the process. This prolonged work also makes it easier to establish the meeting point in the square itself, thus incorporating the chance encounter and the unforeseen into an essential part of this process. In short, in this methodology, the architect develops a task of building relationships.
The project is highly replicable in cases of urban regeneration, both for conceptual and methodological clarity. At a conceptual level, it includes approaching the public space from the ground floors, repairing work through a catalog of reused elements and the incorporation of the memory of the place in a decisive way in the character of the space. At a methodological level, the detection of opportunities, the construction of a motor community, an open and inclusive design and the division of the work into different phases. Although it is not essential, it makes the task easier for the group of technicians to be local, because they will have the ability to build the community in less time.
Good morning, Carme! attends to the health and well-being of citizens, promoting a space for social, comfortable, vegetated, active and safe relationships, encouraging a sense of belonging.
Good morning, Carme! attends to decent work and economic growth, promoting the local economy through local commerce, organic food, jobs related to plastic and visual arts and responsible tourism.
Good morning, Carme! attends to the reduction of inequalities, promoting the square through the attraction capacity of commerce and the arts as the meeting space for the inhabitants of the perimeter neighborhoods, with different origins and social profiles, improving accessibility and inclusion from a comprehensive perspective, based on the contribution of the ground floors to the comfort and safety of the street.
Good morning, Carme! attends to sustainable cities and communities, contributing to urban regeneration, based on the role of active ground floors and the mix of uses, increasing the capacity for participatory planning and management, revaluing the architectural heritage of the art school and the unit of l'Artiga, promoting the awareness, use and appreciation of this heritage, encouraging walking on foot, promoting sustainable consumption in responsible local commerce, reducing urban energy consumption and the consumption of supplies.
