A collaborative reconversion of a skate park by Straddle3

Description of project by Straddle3

Can residents of a Barcelona neighborhood correct a Pritzker Prize? This is the case of the participatory reconversion project of the Porta Firal de Barcelona, ​​now renamed Plaça del Moviment Obrer. Its program is the adaptation of the existing space to meet the needs of the neighborhood, and especially certain demands of groups of urban sports practitioners.

The Foc Street walk was originally designed by Toyo Ito Associates and executed in phases. It is a large public space that provides access to the new Fira de Barcelona from the Montjuïc Mountain. The fluidity of its design provides a suitable framework for that global infrastructure that is the new Fira de Barcelona, ​​the setting for events such as the Mobile World Congress or the Sónar festival. The Moviment Obrer square is the eastern end of the promenade and was the last phase to run, now seven years ago. It is a space where you can recognize the tension between a first-line design, conceived on a large scale, and its fit with local daily life. From the neighborhood's point of view, the resulting public space was inhospitable and under-conditioned, despite its undeniable elegance. This reality would be aggravated by the state of the vegetation, especially the trees, which could not prosper due to the small size of the tree pits and problems in the irrigation system. This fact was superimposed by the absence of other elements that could provide shade, especially considering the extensive paved surface.

Despite the circumstances, some local skaters got into the habit of using the space as a starting point for their collective routes. This was one of the triggers of the package of demands that certain associations sent to the city council. Straddle3 was commissioned by the Pla de Barris program to coordinate a process of co(re)designing the plaza. To this end, an agenda, a participatory methodology and finally the collaborative writing of a preliminary project and later an executive project were defined. The intervention included events in the neighborhood that combined situations of diffusion, participation and sport. The key words for the development of the preliminary project were inclusion, comfort and respect for the original project.

The result, as a "remix", respects the original traces of the design and is integrated into the rest of the walk naturally. New flower beds with the same shapes as the original ones are incorporated perimeter, in order to reserve an area for urban sports, in which the traces of two replaced flower beds become "bowls", related to each other with other skating elements that are also based on the original design vectors. To enhance comfort, the trees are concentrated in the peripheral beds, improving their irrigation system, promoting a considerable green density in the near future, while introducing a large pergola populated by climbing plants to guarantee shade from the first day of use. "