For the sixth straight year, the ESARQ - School of Architecture at UIC Barcelona inaugurates an exhibition of Final Degree Projects at the recently remodelled Rei Martí Water Deposit. The exhibit, as its title, “Full Contact: Barcelona-Llobregat City”, suggests, includes 20 projects that are the result of a battle, a clash between two territorial realities. A Barcelona that recognises the exceptional ecological, economic and social value of the Llobregat Metropolitan Corridor and that acknowledges how important it is for this region to develop in a manner that consolidates its identity and strengthens its numerous opportunities.

On Thursday 20 July, at 7 p.m., the Rei Martí Water Deposit, an old water deposit located near the Bellesguard Tower in Barcelona and recently repurposed as a cultural centre, will open its doors to host the exhibition of Final Degree Projects titled “Full Contact: Barcelona-Llobregat City”, organised by the ESARQ - School of Architecture at UIC Barcelona. The exhibit, which will be on display until 30 July and during the month of September, will include projects that acknowledge and advocate the enormous potential of the system of towns comprising Molins de Rei, Pallejà, Sant Vicenç dels Horts and Sant Feliu de Llobregat, which, bisected by a river park, act like a new territory, like a “single city”: Llobregat City.

During the inauguration, experts such as Salvador Rueda, director of BCNecologia; Carlos Quintans, curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale; Josep Bohigas, director-general of Barcelona Regional; Rosa Rull architect at Bailo i Rull; and responsible for contents of the European Prize for Urban Public Space at the CCCB David Bravo will take part in a dialectic battle aimed at sparking reflection. An open debate on issues ranging from the pertinence of involving the academic world in initiatives that provide real world settings to today’s territorial problems to the perspectives of institutions, bodies and professionals on the metropolitan city and its design.

The 2016-2017 Final Degree Projects (TFGs) were carried out with support from the Town Planning Service of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and focused their attention on the Lower Llobregat Valley, a more than 10km-long stretch of river that, together with the Delta, makes up the Llobregat Metropolitan Corridor, an area of exceptional ecological, economic and social value for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area and for Catalonia as a whole, thanks to the numerous functions it has served throughout history.

The 20 projects comprising the exhibition “Full Contact: Barcelona-Llobregat City” were carried out by students in their final year at the ESARQ - School of Architecture at UIC Barcelona. These students, divided into four workshops directed by architects Iñaki Baquero, Álvaro Cuéllar, Alberto T. Estévez, Miquel Lacasta, Juan Trias de Bes and Pere Vall, based their proposals on a common hypothesis that takes the Llobregat River Park as the civic heart of a “single city”. In other words, each student undertook a specific project as part of a unitary territorial and urban proposal aimed at rehabilitating the edges of the Lower Llobregat Valley’s flood plain and turning the area into a central metropolitan park for cities on both sides of the Llobregat River, ensuring the interconnection of the urban centres and river park by foot and bike.

During the event held to open the exhibition, in addition to the singular inter-expert dialectic battle, the Chair in Industrial Construction and the Environment (CEIM) at the ESARQ - School of Architecture at UIC Barcelona will hand out an award to the project with the most innovative solution in the area of sustainability, followed by the presentation of the Schindler Lifts Accessibility Awards to the Final Degree Projects (TFGs) that most successfully integrate accessibility architecturally. In this regard, the School is a pioneer in making sustainability a mandatory and cross-disciplinary subject within the curriculum.

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