deCOASTruction symposium
The symposium carried out in Valencia on Thursday 16th of December tried to give an exhaustive vision of the issue set out for easa011. In this way, five lecturers were invited. Each one from one of the Spanish regions by the Mediterranean arch. The small differences between the problems from one region to another, the different points of view, approaches, and alternatives have offered to the attendees a global vision and sketched out future ways in order to be able to work as architects but with a complete respect for our environment and our coasts. And, however, this brief symposium has been just a short advance of the great brain-storm that easa011 will give us.
The symposium started with Fernando Gaja i Díaz’s intervention. He showed us the reality of “tsunami urbanization” in the Valencian State in the last decades. His intervention, which was analytic and critic, showed several tips and graphics very enlightening. Many of these were just “approaches or reality estimations”. Because as Gaja said: “the Valencian authorities do not provide with these kind of studies”. He continued asking out the most important question for the Valencian urbanism nowadays: “What are we going to do with all that huge amount of empty dwellings? To conclude he insisted in the idea that it is necessary, before trying to give solutions, to know and quantified the problem if we want to be effectives.
The next intervention was Javier Castellano Pulido and Tomás García Píriz one. They presented for the first time their investigation project called: “Predictive architecture. Preventive strategies in the Andalusian coast”. Javier and Tomás offered us with a conceptual vision of the coast problem, first in a global planetary scale, then in a more focus one in Andalusian coast. Their analysis objective is to unravel the own “dynamics” of the elements, which are not natural objects from the coast, to find out later connections with de urban-architectural development. Those elements have not to be necessary a construction, because they showed us the evolution of some agricultural crops during the history as well as the evolution and transformation of some land-art pieces. They finalized with several specific proposals designed for architectural competitions related with the coast. We could see a clear intention to put on practice and formalized all this ideas and investigations in a very visual and attractive way.
Then, Nicola Colannino set out “The Catalan case”. This Italian architect is doing his Doctoral thesis in Catalonia Technical College (UPC), tutored by Josep Roca Cladera, Director of the “Centro de Política del suelo y Valoraciones” of the UPC. His intervention showed us an amazing number of measurements, tips, and graphics take them with the last technological systems in aerial Photogrammetry. This information showed the improvements and advances in urban development measurement techniques, which were missed two lectures before by professor Gaja. Actually it was really interesting to have an external and completely rigorous and objective vision.
After lunch, it was Juan Antonio Sánchez Morales turn with his lecture: “The coast of Murcia, coitus interruptus”. Juan Antonio analyzed without great details the urban evolution and tourism effects in Murcia. After this short introduction, he started the main part of his intervention, he explained in what consists the “urban object” called “Resorts” which are invading not only the coast but all the territory of Murcia. To describe them, he used two promotional videos made by Resort companies themselves, as well as some homemade video made by himself walking through one of this Resorts. We could see less than 5 people in the street in a 1.400.000 m2 complex. There was an interesting debate after this lecture.
Finally, Manuel Cabellos completed the journey with his lecture: “The tourism spring in the Balearic Islands: Tension between destruction and construction”. Mr Manuel showed an exhaustive analysis and exhibition of the urban evolution in the Islands since Antique age till our days. He manifested the clear relationship between urbanism and policy, in fact he told each event as a kind of battle between authorities, promoters and conservative associations in Mallorca. He established that the urban information has to be interpreted in a completely different way if we talk about a continental area or an island complex, because of the claustrophobic feelings in the second one. Also, it was curious to see the completely different urban model between Menorca, much more respectful and rich, and the rest.
