Infrastructures under Transformation as Volatile Collective Spaces

Cities are manifestations of fluctuant dynamics with spatial qualities that aggregate and interact in time especially when infrastructure is under transformation.1 In this paper the emerging and volatile qualities of collective spaces related to that transforming infrastructure are investigated, enabling speculations on future conditions. How do collective spaces raise, and fluctuate? How are their transitory spatial configurations linked to temporary communal appropriations? How do material and immaterial forces come together through voices that are spatially situated? Collective spaces embedded in dynamic infrastructures are the focus of this PhD-research that seeks to produce new insights on urban territories related to them. Glòries Square (Barcelona, Spain) is the case-study. This infrastructure-based open space, once exposing a variety of emerging logics linked to a complex development process, is now turning into a formalized urban complex that simplifies, thus overwrites that variety.2 Paradoxically responding to long standing demands for public housing and facilities by neighborhood associations, the case gathers the “most advanced” of urban development, exposing how architects’ future visions tremble when mismatching existent qualities are simplified and dismissed, leaving little space to alternative urban processes. The case is experimentally explored through spatial (morphologic/material-programmatic / domain / territorial configurations); human (uses / appropriations / atmospheres) and symbolic (voices / engagement / discussions / imaginaries) compounds. The research aims to tackle the overlapping, unexpected, and fluctuant characters of urban space by means of studying collective spaces and infrastructures as extreme territorial entities; and to test the possibilities of design as a tool to unveil unforeseen spatial relations. The paper advocates for the investigation of volatile urban processes as means to imagine the livability of our cities, in contrasts with the conception of development as static outcomes, in which in the name of a “perfect picture”, the crystallization and extreme formalization become the ultimate goals.status: publishe