Open to all students in fields related to architecture, urban planning, design or technology.

Applicants should demonstrate enthusiasm, interest and desire to learn.

Heritage represents the legacy of our ancestors, preserved for the benefit of future generations. These cultural legacies can be tangible -such as writings, art, photographs, films, artifacts, monuments, landscapes or buildings, or intangibles, including folklore, traditions, languages or customs. Together, this forms a constant, complex and multifaceted process of relationships, in which each era contributes its contemporaneity by transforming and reconfiguring the process: planning with and in heritage, not as an inert material, but as an operating system. Only from the knowledge, this valuable inheritance also constitutes an opportunity of our time to contribute, as far as possible, to its appreciation. We are not merely ob- and con-servers, but active participants in the memory of our present.

Architecture is a determining factor in the materialization, and support, of contemporaneity: working with the pre-existing, from the existing to generate a projected reality, of the future. The actions will have their seed in virtual on-site experimentation in situ with the cultural legacy on which they are founded, as well as in the place of intervention. Their codification will be the basis on which to generate architectural alternatives. These pro-active architectural proposals can be approached from different project perspectives, promoting mechanisms of heritage conservation and activation through the coordination of international cooperation with local actions.

Students enrolled in the course will interact with cultural legacy through the web-based exploration of paradigmatic buildings.

 Go deep for two weeks in the intervention city will allow you to get in touch with the immense local heritage through various virtual tours, contact with neighborhood associations, attendance at specific conferences, presentations with professionals of recognized prestige. The aim of the actions will be to promote progress in the social and cultural habitat. Within the framework presented by the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, “Transforming our world”, orienting its objectives through the five P’s: Planet, People, Prosperity, Peace, Partnership.

Cities, being large accumulators built of people, are places full of opportunities for intervention. The main objective will be to improve the urban heritage as a complex and multifaceted magma of material and immaterial elements. A view of architecture, not only as building but also looking at flows that activate habitat spaces, public spaces, sociability spaces, exchange spaces, political spaces, everyday life spaces, ambiguity spaces, contradictory spaces or intermediate spaces.

The workshop entitled Voids & Condensers: Updating Heritage Areas [Madrid]; alludes to a semantic paradox: vacuum strategy versus condenser accumulation. We address the public space as a place of negotiation, spontaneous social representations, tribunes for demonstrations and demands, scenarios that can be reprogrammed according to circumstances, temporary supports for citizens’ movements, urban showcases of contradictory society, accumulators of layers of collective memory.

We will work in Madrid, a town of remote origins in the vicinity of the Manzanares River. Its peak was in 1561, when Philip II moved his court from the nearby city of Toledo to the Real Alcázar in Madrid. Declared capital until our days, it was to undertake successive enlargements absorbing and transforming itself according to the specific historical moments. The place of intervention will be a paradigmatic scenario, a public space representative of the city, a vacuum, a condenser: Madrid’s Plaza Mayor.

Are you interested in immersing yourself in this enriching experience?

SUGGESTIVE PROGRAM

Session 1: Monday [9:00 AM / 2:30 PM]

-          Welcome ETSAM

-          Introduction Urban analysis

-          Lecture 1

-          Specific mapping. Group work in intervention area virtual data tracking

Session 2.1: Tuesday [9:00 AM / 2:30 PM]

-          Layers and activities

-          Lecture 2

Session 2.2: Tuesday [16:00 AM / 17:30 PM]

-          Visit intervention area

-          Architectural tour in Madrid 1

Session 3.1: Wednesday [9:00 AM / 2:30 PM]

-          Proposals to activate Public space

-          Compilation if work. Preparation of the mid-review

-          Mid-review. Guest Jury

Session 3.2: Wednesday [16:00 AM / 17:30 PM]

-          Architectural tour in Madrid 2

Session 4: Thursday [9:00 AM / 2:30 PM]

-          Specific mapping. Group work in intervention area

-          Drawings and planimetry for Public

-          Lecture 3

Session 5: Friday [9:00 AM / 2:00 PM]

-          Compilation if work. Preparation of the mid-review

-          Party & Final-review. Guest Jury

-          Farewell and closing of the course