EUROPAN 11

YEAR: 2012

CLIENT: Europan

PLOT: Guimaraes, Portugal y Getaria, España

TEAM: Ainhoa del Río, Olatz Iñigo, revirtualiza

MEMORY:

GUIMARAES

What should the aim of the WORK be?

This WORK should not be seen as the solution to a specific problem. We are offering a tool. We are establishing standards for sustainable development based on four basic principles which will guide the growth of the municipality. The aim of the WORK is to initiate a PROCESS towards sustainable development.

Intuit town planning?

Yes, of course, we have defined the PROCESS and a series of specific actions based on 4 basic principles which must be tackled. We don’t know the rhythms of the action taken, so we don’t know the order of implementation either. We don’t know how one action will affect another, in this situation we can only intuit the outcome.

Isn’t it reckless to trust in chance when we are tackling the development of a municipality?

No, providing the PROCESS respects the basic principles we will move towards sustainable town planning, such that the intermediate and final states will not constrain us.

What are we calling basic principles?

We understand basic principles to be the spheres of work and analysis which any town planning or planning action should follow, whatever the scale. The aim is to contribute sustainable development and social reactivation of the location.

Can developing a specific sphere activate general synergies?

We will try to because we aim to “think globally to give a local solution” (Buckminster Fuller).

The problem of the Silvares environment is not a local issue, we have to “zoom out” and expand the frame to enable us to tackle the problem. So that the PROCESS initiated in Silvares might generate global dynamics.

Why not propose a grid or defined square?

Traditionally in town planning the form is the end of the line. The work should come first. We are not proposing a perfectly parametrized closed system. We are proposing the launch of a PROCESS which will make us intuit the final outcome.

GETARIA

“Landscape is not the simple sum of separate geographical elements, but is —for a certain spatial area— the result of the dynamic, sometimes unstable, combinations of physical, biological and anthropological elements, which, dialectically arranged, make the landscape a unique indivisible body in constant evolution” (George Bertrand,1968).