FLOATING WORKSHOP
Barcelona October 2004

Naumon
Barcelona, October 9 – 21, 2004

In the Europe of cities, perhaps only by means of public
housing may we aspire to genuine revision of the
bourgeois paradigms that fail so clearly to determine
how the city should be used every time they are drawn
on. It is urgent to recover policies that view architecture
as a service responsible to the community and committed
to balance and diversity. Social housing could well serve
as a catalyst in bringing this change about.
Public housing is a political, social, economic and
technical issue, which not only provides architecture with
a worthy raison d’être –redefinition of a type of building
constituting the main space for the majority of our cities’
inhabitants– but also calls for architects who are willing
to disappear from their buildings once they have been
completed.
The Workshop sets out to create a work and discussion
environment on the limits of public housing as support
for the new paradigms that affect the three scales of the
city: domestic, constructional and urban. We announce
it as a research project into the possibilities of conceiving
social housing and public space as two compatible
urban systems that may be conceived as a single unit
and used as an instrument of transformation of largescale
urban environments.
The Workshop will focus on project techniques,
methodology and resources. Technical Culture and Urban
Culture will therefore be the main points of reference.
The work model will be an ideas laboratory
understood as an experimental environment of a strong
collective character. To this end, an imaginative,
exploratory attitude will be required regarding the raw
materials of the project and the data that inform it. The
idea is to generate an environment of hyperactivity
concentrated into two intensive weeks, the objective of
which is to engender a copious amount of material with
which to set up an exhibition on the day of the final
presentation and to issue a publication that will record
the experience and its conclusions.

Workshop organized by:

Fundació Mies van der Rohe
Ajuntament de Barcelona
Ministerio de la Vivienda
Gaudi, Culture 2000 programme of the
European Union
Director:
Juan Herreros
Coordinator:
Josep Bohigas

Participants:
Alicante Universidad de Alicante
Algiers École Polytechnique Superior d’Arquitecture et d’Urbanisme
Barcelona Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona
Barcelona Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura del Vallés
Estambul Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. Faculty of Architecture
Madrid Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid
Marseille École d’Arquitecture de Marseille
Patras University of Patras. Department of Arquitecture
Rabat École Nationale d’Arquitecture
Rotterdam Berlage Institut
Venice Istituto Universitario di Arquitettura di Venecia
Zürich Eidgenössische Technische Hohschule Zürich. Darch Dept. Architektur