Sensorial Urbanism

2005

A city that offers self-sufficiency, quality, economy in its services and the enjoyment of body and mind in accordance with the existing urban grid, the environment, the economy and with the most important thing: “the individual and his or her circumstances”.  A city built from the senses of the individual, so that there is a need of a translation of these senses into spaces. The “patio” as a key element of Mediterranean architecture, helps to gather these sensations, the bioclimatic system and the biological machines from the dwellings (bathrooms, kitchens). Making a difference between physiological and virtual spaces, the street is a link and a provider of sensations, like the squares and the green spaces. Life is a cyclical process and so is the city. This might change easily in space and time by versatile spaces of high mutability. Referring to the vital space, the idea is based on the new definition of the traditional standard family in order to achieve the self-sufficiency of people and emphasize “time temporality”.

2006-2009

Following the competition the municipality of Cordova asked the team to work on the masterplan on the area along the motorway.
Several organizational strategies had to be reviewed and where necessary amended to conform to existing legislation, during the drafting process of the plan through to final approval:

1- The surface area of the original boundaries of the S-2 sector was reduced. We had to redistribute land use.
2- The location distribution of the amenity distribution areas was changed.
3- The original proposal was for uniformly distributed housing blocks. However, it was decided that they should be grouped into two sets of two units.
4- The layout of the cycle lane evolved from a local design to a municipal operation.
5- In the original project, we conceived the city’s metabolism through a system of service galleries (supply and collection), but the idea was dismissed for reasons of technical complexity.

Even with all these drafting changes in the project and processes, our practice is satisfied with the proportion of initial ideas carried through to the end.
This process was very successful because of the efforts of Cordova municipality, which changed its way of working from compensation to cooperation, with the result that the municipality itself is now in charge of processing the Urban Plan. The Plan has administrative approval in April 2009.