From 19-29 January, students from the Official Master’s Degree in International Cooperation: Sustainable Emergency Architecture took part in an international workshop aimed at restoring public spaces in the town of Pedregal Grande (Peru), an area devastated by the flooding of the Piura River during the coastal El Niño phenomenon over two years ago.

The workshop was organised in cooperation with the University of Piura and with support from NGOs that have been active in the region since 2017. The aim was to develop a pilot project to restore a public space in El Pedregal. Together with local authorities and residents, the decision was made to construct a children’s play area as an initial step towards creating the so-called “Parque de la Memoria del Niño Costero”, a park to remember the victims of the coastal El Niño event. 

The 26 students from UIC Barcelona worked hand in hand with 14 architecture students from the University of Piura (Peru) and five students from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology-RMIT (Australia). “Before travelling to Piura, we worked with our students to analyse the area’s territorial system and ecological conditions, mobility and accessibility criteria and socioeconomic reality”, explained Carmen Mendoza-Arroyo and Raquel Colacios, director and assistant director of the master’s programme.

The final project involved building a children’s “park-refuge” with recreational equipment designed to promote the psycho-motor activity of the boys and girls from El Pedregal, while also creating a high-ground refuge as part of a hypothetical evacuation route.