Spiderman says it best: “Awesome!” That’s how we can describe the EspaiDer3* Customization Workshop. We spent three days
EspaiDer3* is a concept developed by catarQsis based on the analysis and proposals of the participants in projecte3*, to which Santiago Cirugeda and his studio, Recetas Urbanas, have given a buildable and solid form with the very limited material resources we had. EspaiDer3* is organized around a fixed core to which a variable structure is superimposed that can change with the addition of different elements.
During the first day of the workshop, the metal structure that forms the “legs” of the EspaiDer3* was built and installed completely, and during the second and third days, the “soft” elements, such as nets and awnings, were placed. The aesthetic result, as you can see, is a mixture of shantytowns, deconstructive architecture, and ruins, and yet we couldn’t be prouder of it. Of course, there is still work to be done, and we hope to improve the appearance of the modules in a second tuning phase.
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Note that among the surprisingly large number of participants in the workshop, we have a large representation from architecture schools, which seems to indicate that in the Barcelona of globalized architecture-as-spectacle, there is also a group of future architects who share a somewhat different sensibility.
Finally, the modules that make up the hard core of EspaiDer3* came to us as part of Santi Cirugeda’s initiative to distribute 14 homes of 42 m2 among various social or cultural groups and associations, which were ceded to him by the Municipal Urban Rehabilitation Society of the City Council of Zaragoza. Some of the groups have already made great progress in negotiations with private owners or administrations and in the tuning of their modules, such as the friends of Straddle3, and others will soon begin tuning, such as the cultural association alg-a of Vigo. Each of the groups has encountered certain legal complications, in the management of resources, etc., but the case of alg-a is perhaps the one that shares the most points in common with ours: after months of conversations, contacts, paperwork, and negotiations with the public administration, it has not found sufficient support from the City Council of its city and has been forced to resort to a private individual who has ceded them land on the outskirts of Vigo. We will inform you shortly about their adventures and about the tuning workshop they are preparing for soon. Of course, it hasn’t all been bad news for everyone, and the AA.VV. del Cerrillo (Castuera, Badajoz) does seem to have found the complicity of its City Council. In this way, by sharing experiences, information, and resources, a heterogeneous and informal network of groups has been created that share a certain desire for autonomy and intervention in public space.