For this academic year 2015/2016, IaaC has launched a new Master program: Master in City and Technology. It’s oriented in training the change makers that will develop the projects for the transformation of the 21st century cities, using the potential of information technologies. As a consequence, last October a new group of students, interested in the urban scale of architecture, started occupying the 1th floor room of IaaC, the old administration offices.
It’s a small group, only 9 students (MAA1 and MAA2 students are almost 80), all of them architects, but very representative of the diversity of the cities which they will work on in the future: MaCT students came from 6 different countries. China, Colombia, India, Italy, Lebanon and Turkey.
Moreover, most of them have lived in different countries. Sherine comes from Beirut, Lebanon, but was born in Los Angeles, US, and grew up in Ivory Coast. Chenghuai, from Shanghai, China, studied her Bachelor in Architecture in the US, in the University of Illinois. In the same way, Caglar, from Istambul, Turkey, got his Bacheilor Degree from the Technical University of Virginia, US. Also Chiara, Italian, feels like half Spanish, she have been living in Spain for 9 years.
What happens when such a different people work on the same project and try to reach a common view for the development of the cities of the future? They are testing the group potential in their design research studio, called Fab City Prototype, a collective project. The objective of this studio is to develop a prototype of a neighborhood for a self-sufficient city. The idea is based on the longterm research developed by IaaC, related to the idea that cities in the future will be able to produce all the resources that they need locally, while being connected globally. The studio focus on developing a 1km x 1km unit of a potential city, as a basic unit (the traditional neighborhood) that could be replicated and extended to create a full-scale metropolis.
They are now working on the research part of the project, sharing and discussing the strategies to adopt for the model that they are developing. Everyone enrich the research with data, technologies and strategies that comes from their investigation and from their personal experience as well. So maybe some ideas that sound new to some people, are very common to others, because of their different background. One evening they were discussing about new modalities of housing, such as sharing some part of the house (the ones that are not used during most of the day) with other apartments in the same building. For most of the students this practice is unusual and somehow innovative, but for Olivia (as Chenghuai wants to be called) it is a traditional way of living the house. This is just an example of the richness originated from this multicultural context.
And what happens when they meet for a home-made dinner? Sauteed tofu in hot and spicy sauce, stir fry bok choy with mushrooms, butter chicken, tortilla soup and Jamaican salad were in the same table, all this accompanied with mulled wine and everywhere music… a trip around the world without leaving Barcelona.