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MBIArch Notes: Montcada i Reixac

Architectural Design

Design Studio at Montcada i Reixac

Montcada i Reixac has historically been one of the main entrances to the Barcelona region. Its internal structure follows the Besòs River, but mainly responds to an extraordinary density of infrastructure that occupies and fractures the territory. On this extremely complex amalgam of roads, trains, highways, water and recycling plants, but also rivers and mountains of high ecological value, there is an existing large plot that is still immaculate; an agricultural and forest area that due to several historic conditions has remained as an untouched island within the regional infrastructural net, and industrial and housing uses that surround the plot.

The site has been identified (and protected) in the late years for its ecological, but also strategic values. This plot is an agricultural land with a rich set of connections to the regional network. The proposed exercise responds to its relevance from a landscape and ecological point of view, and incorporates a program that responds to its potential at a regional level, while providing the frame for the maintenance and restructuring of the existing landscape. A new cemetery for the metropolitan Barcelona is proposed, with local traditional burial areas but also incorporating new ceremonial and a-cultural cremation typologies.

The Cemetery program is a tool to think coherently and continuously on landscape and architecture, space and circulation, time, and materiality. Three different scales (conceptual and design-wise) have been addressed; the regional scale that needs to provide clarity on the access to the cemetery, its relevance in a regional scale and its connectivity to the infrastructures. The scale that describes the site as a hole, and builds up a strategy for the landscape; and finally the architectural scale, that constructs the immediate envelope, framing space and materiality. In parallel, and as a warm up assignment, two short exercises were addressed in the studio on the identification of continuous patterns and how they would operate when articulated on a thick 2D; and the production of a movie-like presentation of non-referential images that would operate as reference for the cemetery project in Montcada.   

The exercise has been developed by groups of two, three and even four students. Each design responds to a specific take on the variety of subjects and scales addressed, resulting in a rich set of different conceptual and formal proposals. But interestingly enough, all the initial conceptual approaches were stretched to build up strong and coherent projects that stressed all the scales, and dealt with a degree of phenomenology or tectonicity that where individually relevant to each proposal.

A few discussions were present over the course of the studio, as well as in the final jury. A first structural decision that had to do with the understanding and interpretation of the cemetery was crucial to the conceptual and formal design of the landscape: the differentiation between the project as a lineal and set promenade, with a number of events related (formally or conceptually) to the path, versus the approach to the project as a grid, a non-lineal setup that opens up an array of circulation and uses of the space, but that derives hierarchy through topography, reference or architecture. The discussion on how to operate with topography and (visual) reference was by itself always present in each project, and was generally used to architecturalize and construct difference and events on the landscape while responding to the specifics of the Montcada site.

Obviously when dealing with a cemetery, discussions on culture, memory and phenomenology also became central to many projects; however, those were built in the discourse in different scales and intensities depending on the proposals, which enriched a cross reading of all the projects and added value individually in significant formal manners. Time was also incorporated in many designs; time as a romantic tool, incorporating sometimes decay, but also seasonal changes on landscape, or as a construction and real tool: some projects incorporated phasing as a necessary aspect of the design.

Finally, there was a necessary engagement on the physical and conceptual construction of the wall (as a requirement to contain the burials): from an architectural discussion on the identity, formality and tectonics of the physical object to an intermediate device that would mediate between architecture and landscape, and would shape topography.

Each of the final proposals was clear and rich on the individual conceptual approach, and was able to effectively construct it over the different scales that the studio faced by introducing new topics to the discussion. However the most interesting reading of the studio is a cross comparison of all the projects, since they are able to set up a few central discussions on the site itself, its centrality and topographic possibilities, but mainly on a non-productive landscape as interpreted in the last years but that is capable to fulfil the inherent needs to make it rich, complex, structural and supportive of other activities beyond its central role as a cemetery.

Clara Solà-Morales, Assistant Professor - Design Studio

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