ECO-MOB is a course of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Master in City and Technology, in 2016/17 by:
Tutors: Federico Parolotto, Francesca Arcuri, Sebastiano Scacchetti,
Julius Streifeneder, Kathrin DiPaola
Students: Abhignya Grandhi, Frederick Ajjoub, Peng Wang
Barcelona is one of the most attractive cities in the world. Unfortunately, with the increasing density in population and vehicular traffic,
it is today the 3rd most congested city in Europe. It is also one of the most densely populated and polluted cities. Today, most cities are facing this issue.
Hence, taking Sants-Barcelona as our pilot project, we introduce ECO-MOB.
Eco-Mob is an amalgamation of both advanced technology and architectural infrastructure which results in a mobility service. This would not only eradicate private vehicles but also unify the entire transportation system. The barriers or the boundaries of transportation with different means would be negated and give us a unified and comfortable transportation system which will be ecologically and economically beneficial.
Infrastructure shaped Sants from the cars to the train. Unfortunately, many constraints exist. Our aim of the proposal is to merge architecture with modern technologies in order to achieve the efficiency of Sants in all layers of urban scale [from foreground to aerial level]. Also valorizing the potentials of the site where we have many important nodes.
The z-axis today has only two layers: the military and the commercial zones. The injection of the new layer: eco layer will not only reduce the traffic on the ground, street/ownership parking and the sound
(using instead of 4.5 millions m3 of empty space in altitude, we can now have 1850 millions m3 which is 400 times more), but also bring efficiency and sustainability.
The flying capsules would be transformable which would be adaptable to road-rail and air and also be running on car sharing system. It will be driver less and have sensors for the safety of the people. The higher we go, the easiest we travel and see the city.
As we know, privately owned vehicles are parked 95% of the time, a lot of space is wasted. With the car sharing system we not only reduce the privately owned vehicles by 67 % but also reduce the number of vehicles in both local and global scale benefits.
Last but not the least, with the reduction of the number of vehicles, availability of space is given back to the citizens. These will be used as a public space where we link the Olympic Park and Sants by a greenbelt. It will valorize greenery and the pedestrian axis. (green spaces should be 9m2 of per person, in Barcelona it’s only 5.6m2). People will start watching the sky, the light and improve communities.
Z-axis Accessibility will create new ways of seeing the urban cities, we will have a new aerial urbanism from ramps to geometry which adapts with the movement of the Capsules.
In conclusion, Eco-Mob helps in reducing the density/congestion of vehicles and increases the greenery, resulting in a sustainable city.
It will be an innovative-futuristic district
Making Sants a New Touristic attraction in Barcelona and in the whole world.