Description
In "BCN: Speed and Friction," Dutch architect Kas Oosterhuis, working with architects, designers, educators, and students, heads a distinguished team of professionals concerned with building, urbanism, and environment in a seven-day, nonstop design workshop at the University of Catalunya's School of Architecture in Barcelona, Spain. "BCN"-the acronym for Barcelona-is the profusely illustrated, bilingual (English and Spanish) document produced by the Oosterhuis' workshop. "BCN" considers what new forces in design, architecture, and urbanism might emerge from considering speed as part of the near-future city. "BCN" also questions how those forces may be intelligently contemplated. Oosterhuis' brief for the workshop was the imagining and design of a city conceived on the basis of speed and friction derived from an event such as a Formula I race. Typically, such one-day events briefly transform a city by closing streets, creating new urban patterns, attracting viewers from other locations, and focusing on the spectacle of speed. But Oosterhuis asked: What if such an ephemeral event became the permanent basis for a city? What new urban and architectural forms, imagined along the parameters of speed and friction, might result, and how they might become an innovative model for urban form? This design "charrette," know at the university as a Vertical Workshop for its involving all levels of students from second to fifth year, is intended to stimulate fresh thinking and intense, under-pressure design collaboration resulting in a large-scale architectural output for presentation on the last day. The team of architects working with Oosterhuis included Ilona LA(c)nArd, Alberto T. EstA(c)vez, Affonso Orciuoli, Christian Babler Font, Michael Bittermann, Natalia Botero, Maruan Halabi, Gijs Joosen, Amanda Schachter, and Miguel VerdA. Together they organized teams of students and associate designers to research, explore, and deliver ideas for design, technology, planning, and architecture derived from Oosterhuis' determined concept of re-envisioning a city.
