Barcelona Architectures Festival Award

Given out to groups and individuals, the Model Awards for Architectural Experimentation consist of a sum of money and an opportunity to think up and design one of the installations, augmented realities, curated projects or experimental projects to feature in the 2023 edition of Model in Barcelona.

Award Documents:

Design Process:

r1 - Buttom-Up proposals

Buttom-up design in architecture involves starting with smaller-scale details and gradually building up to larger-scale elements, resulting in a design that is more focused on details, flexible, innovative, and collaborative.

Overall, bottom-up architecture strategies can help dissolve social gaps in urban areas by prioritizing community engagement, inclusivity, flexibility, and sustainability, creating spaces that are more responsive to the needs of the community and that promote social equity.

Community Engagement + Inclusivity + Flexibility + Sustainability

Concept design - Living Grid by DFMD

In this project, a parametric joint of 20x20cm was designed to be machined from a cardboard block and fitted with up to 5 cardboard rods.

This innovative approach allowed the community to assemble the components into various structures such as shelters, merchandise storage, furniture, and even a model pavilion.

The CNC machine was set up on site, which gave the community the opportunity to understand and potentially modify the manufacturing process.

The exhibition, with a two-month timeline, is estimated to hold six hundred 1 sq meter pyramids.

Growth example

Posible forms usign the same structural solution

Posible forms usign the same structural solution

Shipment arrangement of the pyramids in 1 x 2 meter pallets

Using the least space posible

The folding process could be done on site

Foundation proposal for the emergent tower

As part of the curators’ vision, community access to the exhibition and bottom-up strategies may not be within the capabilities of the festival, with a greater emphasis placed on the final formal result.

With these said the team focused on more traditional approach based on conceptual art references like ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’ by Hieronymus Bosch.

Concept design - Protoland by DFMD

The Protoland exhibit follows similar conceptual principles as living skin, but the formal result corresponds to the curators’ art references. I proposed a different manufacturing process involving machining foam blocks and applying a hard coat to create modular assembly components. These components are then used to construct various Platonic solids or other pre-established forms.

However, this approach may limit the community’s ability to create beyond the festival’s predetermined needs.

Understanding the basic shape principles as part of the living space

Using the building blocks to create enclosed and open space

The foam blocks could be used as urban furniture

r2 - Top-Down proposals

Nomad Assembly by h3o

Nomad Assembly is a changing, mobile landscape of devices that stimulate human interaction among the variety of classes brought together under the large roof of Encants market. The facility aims to encourage new possibilities for democratic and horizontal debate, by using elements that invite reflection and speak of identity and cultural diversity, through the material nature of objects that we find in this location.

Design Concept

The pink surface of the shapes is altered by the appearance of scars that open and close, and the bits of furniture sold at the Encants intermingle with these surfaces, providing the intervention with a hybrid identity. Altogether, this forms a patchwork of abstract volumes that represent different ways of life, accumulate memory and express the mixture of classes that coexist under the roof of Encants market, which become a stimulus for inter-class debate.
This is assembly scenography, which is capable of transforming both the interior and exterior of the Encants, thanks to the mobility of all of its pieces. From the opening event until Sant Jordi’s Day (St George’s Day), the market will be full of fun and celebration. When the market is open, its interior becomes the ideal scenario for Model Books.

https://www.model.barcelona/edicio2023/en/activities/nomad-assembly
https://h3o.es/es/asamblea-nomada-festival-model-barcelona/

p1 - Production/Smoke Cocoon

As part of the collaboration efforts with the festival I helped with the design and execution of the smoke cocoon.

The towers in Nomad Assembly exhibition are reminiscent of the initial living grid skin proposal. I used some of the leftover materials used for the top-down prototypes and also the aluminium bending process we developed for the pyramids.