Once
again this year, the UIC’s ESARQ
School of Architecture began the academic year with the Vertical Workshop, an
activity carried out in the first week of the year in which students in the
first to the fifth years of the Architecture programme work in teams to provide
a quick solution to a specific exercise. This year, the Vertical Workshop
focused on Barcelona’s
Horta-Guinardó district.

The title
of the 2012 Vertical Workshop was “Watering Places: The Fountains of Horta-Guinardó” and the theme was the public
fountains in the district. Horta-Guinardó has many fountains, but their
placement lacks continuity. The water from these fountains comes from the hills
around the city. The objective of this year’s workshop was to recover this
heritage and give it added value with the representative elements of the
district so the fountains can be identified as popular places for people to
meet. 

Nearly 200
ESARQ students worked in teams for one week to offer proposals that would
revitalize these fountains. The projects were done in life-size format on the UIC grounds with a maximum volume of 4 x 4 m, i.e. 16 m² and a maximum
height of 2.5 m.

After a
day spent viewing project presentations, the jury, made up of architects Enric Batlle and Miquel Batlle; Gonzalo Puelles, the Horta-Guinardó councillor
for Urban Planning; and Francina Vila, the Horta-Guinardó district councillor,
deliberated and then made their award decisions public at the ceremony presided
over by Vicenç Sarrablo, the Director of the ESARQ School of Architecture. First prize went to a
project to remodel Font del Conte led by architects Tomeu Ramis and Aixa del Rey from the studio Flexoarquitectura.
Second prize was granted to the proposal on Font del Roure fountain presented by Carmen Moreno, Julien Fajardo and Isabel Díaz. Third prize was awarded to
the proposal on Font de la Mina fountain near Can Barret by Carlos Gor and Tomás García Piriz. An audience award was also granted
to the proposal on Font del Príncep de Girona fountain by the team from the MX-SI architectural
studio (Marta Partida and Héctor Mendoza).

Now that
the proposals have been presented, the municipal leaders of the Horta-Guinardó district
will study them because the town hall is interested in making dynamic changes
in its eleven neighbourhoods through an economic and cultural promotion plan.
The plan will highlight the district’s cultural, historic and natural heritage
through the slogan “The City of Water”.

The 2012 Vertical
Workshop was directed by Juan Domingo Santos, an architect and project
professor in the School of Architecture at the Universidad de Granada; Vicenç Sarrablo; Jordi Roviras;
and Borja Ferrater. It was coordinated by a team of young architects made up of Jaime Fernández, Adrián Jurado and
Albert Guerra.