On 3 September, UIC Barcelona School of Architecture will open the new academic year and, like every year, it will do so with the inauguration of a new edition of the Vertical Workshop. Entitled “The Rec Comtal in Vallbona”, from 4 to 13 September, students in second to fifth year of the Bachelor’s degree in Architecture will split into teams to jointly design and build a prototype of urban furniture aimed at enhancing the remains of the Rec Comtal canal in the Barcelona district of Vallbona. 

This new edition of the Vertical Workshop will be coordinated by the architect and lecturer at UIC Barcelona School of Architecture, Íñigo Ugalde and will also be co-managed by the architects Carles Enrich and Andrés Lupiáñez. Both architects have worked actively on restoring the Rec Comtal in recent years. Indeed, Carles Enrich is the author of the Strategic Plan to restore this infrastructure, commissioned by Barcelona City Council in 2015. Andrés Lupiáñez is co-author of an earlier study on the restoration of the canal where it passes through Vallbona. 

The primary focus of the workshop is to study the social and environmental problems in the immediate surroundings of the Rec Comtal as it passes through Vallbona. This diagnosis will allow the students to detect the areas which most urgently require work. Proposals of ephemeral and participatory action will be put together to help resolve some of these in order to envision and assess the historical and environmental importance of the Rec Comtal for the neighbourhood of Vallbona. These actions will be based on the use of recycled materials and waterproof fabric donated by the local company, Sedatex. 

On 13 September, the structures created by the students will be erected and installed on-site in the section of the Rec Comtal at Vallbona in so they can be assessed by a jury from prestigious architecture firms H Arquitectes and Peris+Toral Arquitectes. The results of the assessment will be made known on the afternoon of 13 September in the Casal de Barri in Vallbona where the students’ own “making of” videos will be shown.