April 2023
Cultures of Assembly
+MODEL Award at Barcelona Architectures Festival

Cultures of Assembly (COA) was awarded to participate at the MODEL Festival of Architectures in Barcelona. Our team member Cesar Reyes Najera recorded a series of podcast episodes for culturesofassembly.org reflecting on Barcelona as a paradigmatic case for deliberative democracy, civic initiatives, and critical spatial practices. COA is a crossover project promoted by the Chair of the City of Esch to critically discuss and mobilise collective imaginary, citizen assemblies and spatial practices to inform future processes of urban regeneration in post-industrial sites in Europe.

Our podcast recording was a nomadic activity that moved around different neighbourhoods in Barcelona, to dialogue with the agents, spatial practitioners, professionals and public servers, and witness within their context the different challenges and conflicts of inclusive and diverse city-making

Serving the Public, Deliberative Democracies, and Reading the City were the main topics addressed with key agents from different professions and social contexts in Barcelona that understand that the construction of inclusive cities is an everyday reality. They discussed the production and use of urban space, the role and value of low threshold design discourses, the spaces for experimentation that allow the emergence of native knowledge, the care of urban commons and collective governance models, and the need of small granularity of democratic units.

Cultures of Assembly aligned with the theme and values of the MODEL Festival Radical Empathy as it understands the city as a space of mutual affection between heterogeneous communities, of participation as engagement, and consensus within conflict between cultures, classes, and generations.

Contributors: De Vei a Vei, Vania Sachenka – Las Kellys, Blanca Valdivia – Col·lectiu Punt 6, Zaida Muxí, Josep Maria Montaner, Dafne Saldaña – Equal Saree, Verónica Mansilla, Amica Dall, Clara Nubiola, Pablo Martinez and Mar Santamaria – 300000kms, Abdoulaye Seck – Top Manta, Pau Faus.

Model Barcelona Architectures Festival was promoted by the Barcelona City Council and curated by Eva Franch i Gilabert.

More info here and here.

Photos: Patricia Boixeda, Jordi Claramunt, Antonio Montesinos