November, 2022

Participatory process linked to the Urban Master Plan for the Agulla area

“El parc de L’Agulla” and its surroundings is a large space located in the municipalities of Manresa and Sant Fruitós del Bages. It is an area of great territorial interest as environmental, landscape, ecological, agricultural, and cultural realities converge. Patrimonial assets give it a great uniqueness and are the basis of the values that become a strategic area for the entire Plan de Bages.

In the framework of drafting an Urban Master Plan, this participatory process has been developed, aiming to link the urban regulations with the reality of the territory, especially at a social level. The park’s expansion is inevitably planned and projected consistently with the needs of the people who use it daily (residents, farmers, park workers…) and sporadically.

For all this, it has been an intense and complex process, which has required a variety of spaces and channels for debate so that everyone has the opportunity to share their proposals with the rest of the agents involved. The information collected has been worked on in parallel with the whole team to find and define the criteria that will make the participants have an impact on future regulations.

Place

Manresa and Sant Fruitós

del Bages

[ 78.192 and 8.936 inhabitants]

Scale

Supra-municipal

Type of project

Urban Strategies

Citizen cooperation

Duration

6 months [2021-2022]

Promoter

Direcció General d’Ordenació

del Territori i Urbanisme,

Ajuntament de Manresa,

Ajuntament de Sant Fruitós

del Bages

Team

*estel (Alba Domínguez

Ferrer, Marc Deu Ferrer,

Konstantina Chrysostomou,

Arnau Boix i Pla)

Collaborators

Neighbors of Manresa and Sant

Fruitós del Bages

Press

Watch the video at youtube

project

Executive project of the Plaça del Pi (Phase 2)

The urbanization project is the second phase of the transformation of Plaça del Pi, in continuity with the works carried out on the other side of Ricardo Romero street, at the entrance to “Jaume II El Just“ public school.

The proposal is made of conversations held with the teaching team of the educational center. It aims to alleviate the public space giving priority to the pedestrian and increase the play and stay spaces of the Plaza del Pi to facilitate the development of related activities to everyday life and improve the relationship between the nursery building and the rest of the square.

The design of the square is organized from a large esplanade of compacted sand, the planting of new plant species, trees, and shrubs, and the installation of new living elements that also act as potential play areas. The project also seeks to redefine the perimeter fence of the building to improve the visual connectivity of the building with the street and to take advantage of part of the interior spaces as new public spaces available to the general public.

Place

Benifairó de la Valldigna

[1.592 inhabitants]

Scale

Public space

Type of project

Public space design

Duration

4 months [2020]

Promoter

Municipality of Benifairó de la

Valldigna and Diputació de

València

Team

*estel (Marc Deu Ferrer i

Konstantina Chrysostomou,

Alba Domínguez Ferrer, Arnau

Boix i Pla)

7a+i arquitectura i enginyeria

Collaborators

Educational centre of

Benifairó de la

Valldigna

project

Executive Participated Project for the Plaça del Sol

The drafting of a Participatory Executive Project to redevelop the Plaza del Sol in Puerto de Sagunto was based on a collaborative work methodology between the municipal technicians and technicians, the drafting team, and the neighborhood and the municipality’s social and economic agents.

The resulting document incorporates, on the one hand, the political-technical and citizen perspective and the recognition of their contributions; on the other, management strategies, dynamization, or change planning. These strategies are proposals for interventions (short, medium, or long term) that do not necessarily involve works and that accompany the transformation process of the square but, above all, in the “meanwhile,” that transformation does not take effect.

This collaborative work, beyond the formal result of the new Plaza del Sol, has settled the decisions taken on, among others, the following agreements:

Design criteria: respect and reinforce the itineraries of passage and connection between neighborhoods and recognize the square as a crossing point. Promote living and permanency spaces, have urban elements that facilitate this and identify the square as a meeting place. Incorporate and apply the concept of climate shelter in the square and reuse or rehabilitate existing urban and material elements as much as possible.

Management criteria: promotion of co-responsibility with the maintenance of the square by involving the CEIP Nuestra Señora de Begoña so that the students promote dissemination actions on the importance of cleaning the public space or that include didactic units in the school curriculum related to the care of urban nature. Promote artistic interventions in the public space that reinforce the Plaza del Sol’s identity and facilitate the neighborhood residents’ feeling of belonging. Enable the permanent availability of public toilet services in the Municipal Market building.

Planning criteria: carry out public communicative actions related to the transformation process of the square, its calendar, and the final result after the works. Incorporate evolutionary or progressive shading elements to condition the plaza climatically while the new vegetation needs to acquire a sufficient size. A general performative activity of identity transition could also be carried out: a ceremony of removal and change of location of the statue of the worker, and putting into value the new character of the sun and the shadow.

Place

Sagunt

[67.043 inhabitants]

Scale

Neighborhood

Type of project

Urban Strategies

Citizen cooperation

Public space design

Duration

6 months [2021]

Promoter

Ajuntament de Sagunt

Team

*estel (Arnau Boix,

Konstantina Chrysostomou,

Marc Deu, Alba Dominguez)

SUC arquitectes

Maria Pedro

Ivana Ponsoda

AIG (arquitectura ingeniería y

gestión)

Collaborators

Sagunto City Council

technical team,

Neighbors and municipal

entities

Press

New uses for the former Col·legi del Carme

Incorporating the old Col·legi del Carme into the municipal resources and equipment is one of these draft projects that need to contrast the starting assumptions of the Caldes City Council with the vision of the people who will use it, the final recipients of the space. And it is particularly because of the symbolic charge and the deep roots in the collective memory that this building has.

The work process we propose, in close collaboration with Equal Saree, aims to make visible this collective memory of the future tools, making it possible for citizen participation to give it use and function. But above all, it is an active part of its creation, promotion, and management, so it is guaranteed that the proposals launched for this new use make sense for the municipality and offer a space to recognize each other.

The participatory sessions are focused on the will to open spaces of cooperation between the political-technical team of the City Council, the group of drafting architects (Mangrana architects) of the preliminary draft of the new proposal for the old Col·legi del Carme, and the associated citizens and not associated with Caldes de Montbui. Through restricted technical sessions and workshops open to the public held in the equipment area, a process of cooperative work takes place in which the architectural decisions advance at the same time as the joint report on technical requirements, community needs, and citizen wills.

The participatory process “El Carmen s’obre al poble” developed progressively and cumulatively from face-to-face meetings and digital support tools, including the municipal platform “Decidim” and an electronic suggestion box. It was about, based on the recognition of historical use and the memories and experiences accumulated in the old school, contrasting the current technical and citizen needs of the municipality and trying to distribute them among the different spatial resources offered by the equipment.

Thus, the program of needs enjoyed broad agreement among all the participants, assuming, among others, the opening of the large patio of the equipment as a new public space of the municipality, underlining the importance of the flexibility of the spaces and the maintenance of the social and historical essence of the whole building.

In addition, the Follow-up Commission established during the participatory process assumed the proposal of citizen involvement throughout the planning, transformation, and commissioning process. The method of transforming the equipment will necessarily take time, and we did not want to miss the opportunity to carry out activities in the “meanwhile,” to give continuity to the reflections on co-management initiated in the process and to advance the feeling of belonging and citizen reappropriation of the future equipment.

Place

Caldes de Montbui

[17.797 inhabitants]

Scale

Municipal

Tipus de projecte

Cooperació ciutadana

Duration

3 months [2022]

Promoter

Municipality of Caldes de Montbui

Team

*estel (Arnau Boix i Pla,

Konstantina Chrysostomou,

Marc Deu Ferrer, Alba

Domínguez Ferrer)

Equal Saree

Collaborators

Political and technical team of

the City Council

Mangrana architects

Neighbors of Caldes de Montbui

Municipal entities

Presentation

Presentation video of the

participatory process

Press

News about the process on local

television

project

Participatory process linked to the Urban Master Plan for the Agulla area

Executive project of the Plaça del Pi (Phase 2)

Executive Participated Project for the Plaça del Sol

New uses for the former Col·legi del Carme

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