Bringing “Wetness” Back into the City

This project in its ambition to tackle complexities in the wicked problem of undesirable “dryness” that persists in Barcelona’s post-industrial waterfronts and urban fringes, aims to leverage the concept of “wetness” in its various interpretations and representations to reimagine a better future by building resiliency, vitality, and adaptability. Through rigorous cross-scale analytical processes to unfold the multidimensional existing qualities surrounding the site and its larger regional settings, a robust design inventory and strategy systems through typological investigation as well as articulated spatial manipulation, and orientation are distilled to address the issues at hand. In its essence, the design uses a diverse yet interconnected set of tools in an attempt to reach a level of comprehensivity that begins to resolve the different “dryness” in social, economic, ecological, geographical, and infrastructural terms under a dynamic urban scale inclusive of a waterfront, riverscape and urban center. It is a design by inquiry, through research, realized via investigation, and expanded from exploration and projection.