Commoned Social Care
Perspective section of the laundry and shelter at the base of one of the two systems.
The project is about the design of a decentralised social-health network, dispersed throughout the neighbourhood, intersecting collective equipments programmes and users.
My studio started a collaboration with Barcelona en Comu, a citizen platform governing the city council, in particular with the Social Innovation Team, exploring the spatial questions that come from the demands of social movements.
The brief points out the need of a Drug Consumption Room (DCR), which is a facility providing with spaces for drug users under the supervision of doctors and nurses.
The aim of the project is to detach from the original conception of a DCR, as a unit attached to an Health Care equipment, to move to the organisation of a network, distributed within the neighbourhood.
The decentralised system allows for the implementation of social-health collective equipments within a community.
Thus offering a system of support that intersects with other uses, rather than a programme based on a linear progression and enclosed within a clinical environment.
Through the integration of the individuals within the existing network of collective equipments it is possible to re-frame the idea of ‘rehabiitation’. Rather than isolating the individuals in a prescribed space, a urban common is provided, where the intersection of paths with the existing community is the main aim.
Scheme of decentralisation of a Drug Consumption Room.
Catalogue of elements composing the system and possible arrangements.
The most important architectural element of the distributed scheme is the articulation of the external open space.
The external open space is a community use which cannot be capitalised, and is an important part of Catalan culture and social inclusion (the Plaça). External open spaces, if carefully considered, can allow users to feel part of a community without being in a circumscribed space, empowering a community to use the space as they see fit.
This drawings aim at finding several arrangements of the open areas in order to create a connecting element between different Collective Equipments that constitutes in itself a Urban Common. It creates an ecological network that represents an alternative spatial circuit than the one provided on the street.
The bridge exploits empty spaces, roofs, terraces, creating passages and facilitating the connection between already existing equipments: the bridge enters the equipment buildings, adding facilities and blurring the line between open and closed spaces; the common facilities are located half-way from the equipments, which are more independent; commoning happens in front of the buildings and the limit between open and closed is kept.
1:200 model of one of the interventions. Resin and plywood.
The system aims to create a “urban commoning” through the connection of existing facilities, providing public access to spaces that are usually not accessible, appropriating spaces within collective equipments, almost carving their volumes.
This is one of the collective equipments, Centre de Serveis Socials, the drawing presents what would be the outcome of the system.
It attaches to the existing building, appropriating (almost carving) a space inside of it, and provides a connection to an external open space. Thus, it allows a public access to a space that is normally not accessible and hidden from the street.
It creates an alternative spatial circuit, composed by vertical circulation and platforms over existing rooftops connected through passageways.
The two interventions.