During the last two weeks of February, students from the Master's Degree in International Cooperation: Emergency Sustainable Architecture took part in a local workshop, whose main objective was to transform Montjüic into a more inclusive and diverse green infrastructure for the city of Barcelona. The workshop forms part of the master’s degree’s academic programme and is inspired by the objectives outlined in the Montjüic Action Plan (2019-2029) developed by Barcelona Regional.  The workshop was led by Carmen Mendoza Arroyo, director of the master’s degree; assistant director, Raquel Colacios and the lecturers Marta Benages and Apen Ruiz. 

Thanks to this initiative, students had the chance to work on the ground and devise plans to improve accessibility for the many neighbourhoods that border Montjüic. “Montjüic has become a tourist attraction thanks to its museums, gardens and the facilities and stadium built for the Olympic Games in 1992. However, these urban design projects that were launched as a marketing strategy to help the city to grow, have accentuated the economic and physical gap and overlooked the possibility of more egalitarian urban developments that take the adjacent neighbourhoods into consideration”, explain Carmen Mendoza and Raquel Colacios. 

Students presented their proposals on 6 March and outlined the barriers, spatial vulnerabilities, facilities and cultural and civic activities they had detected along four routes leading into the Montjüic park. In response, they proposed a series of strategies that would allow for greater connectedness between the city and the mountain.