Feelings, something very important for all of us, connecting us with a world, people and events. Even if they are good or bad they are part of everyday life and create a memories. Stress is today way of life that is almost impossible to avoid. Restlessness and bustle as well as excessive demands and excpectacions that are posed to us have been reflected in our bodies and minds. On the contrary, if we are more rested and relaxed we have more energy and peace. But the question is what exactly make us feel relaxed and happy? Man quickly adjust to everything that is already known. However, various of space, time activities can contribute improving the human mood.
Yes, the things are changing… Nowadays, we think of Barcelona as a land of the sun, sand and sangria, but its easy to forget that before the games in 1992 it was a different place. It was a place without a beach , 2 miles of a beachfront and a modern marina has been created by demolishing industrial buildings on the waterfront before the games. The Olympics represented a significant effort to restructure the city. As a result it also has economical and social transformation. Olympic infrastructure has provided 20 000 permanent jobs in Barcelona, and now 20 years after, Barcelona is one of the most popular tourist destination in the world.
The question is what we can change in the next 50-100 years? What is going to happen in the future? Taking in advance existing data from 1992-2014 of the port of Barcelona, it was concluded that if we did analysis of the next 35 years, with no incidents, we could manage to increase the amount of tourists per year for 12% and only 1,2 % of increase of amount of boats. If the number of people increase drastically and the number of boats for only 1.2 %, we could conclude that one of the most important factors are changes in the size and the shape of the ships. As a consequence of above changes, there would be scenario of new floating city coming to existing city. The question is: what is the appropriate connection between them? Is it some solid static structure or movable, transformable device as a part of the port?
As a main tool for our project we had to analysis ramps.Lets look back to the evolution of the ramps and what they really presented. The first ramps in the history have been made by wood. They were static and represented a path from point A to point B. Later, they became concrete ramps (as the part of the street, buildings, etc., but still were solid and static). A few years later, dynamic and movable ramps began to occur. Also, it is possible to separate them on recreative, sports, traffic, pedestrian, artificial and natural. But in common, they all had the same characteristics: connecting two points/places.
Is it the only function of the ramp? It has more functions? What are the future ramp? Analyzing this chronological development led us to new ideas. In the future ramp should not be so static, having all the time same size, same slope… but they should be capable to transform, resize according to external influences and according to the place they occupy.
The many faces of Barcelona include the medieval Old Town, the unique street grid resulting from 19th-century urban planning. The city has both long sandy beaches and green parks on the hills, pretty much side-by-side. Barcelona is also famous for a number of prominent buildings, of which perhaps the most known are by the architect Antonio Gaudi, including his Sagrada Familia, which became Barcelona’s symbol to many. Barcelona is a huge city, but the modern and very extensive public transport system allows you to get anywhere. Metro, buses and trams run very frequently until late at night. Apart from that, there are several cable cars, funiculars, railways, sightseeing buses, taxis, local trains, night buses and other transport systems. But is it enough fast and interesting way for tourists? Can we improve transportation system? Is it possible to make something that become connection between two points and at the same time “new attraction” between two existing attractions?
Our main objectives are to understand our surrounding. The morrot and the port of Barcelona are fundamental for our propose. Port and its history has been relevant during the years. Barcelona, with its early industrialization, its busy port and its proximity to France has been historically a mixed town.
With our data analysis and future assumptions we imagined different city, different era where is proposed a model of transporting people from city to city, in a way of adventures and experiences. The idea is to expand all through the territory and in the moment this incredible ships(floating islands) arrive, we will be ready to receive them, to give the users fantastic adventures, emotions and completely new experiences.
We imagine this future device widespread all over the world connecting airplanes, ships, cities and more, in a way of having new experiences and creating new memories. What is vital force of the city? People! So, like blood particles move inside veins, people bring life into the city via their movement. Our project is about movement and connectivity. To propose the future connectivity in the port it is crucial to analyze different types of existing city movement. There we wanted to tell story about what is city movement, how does it look, how people really move in the city, what they use and do we see new way for it? Did we make new decisions for better future?
Acording to activities and functions we noticed three zones on the site. In order to connect it, we produced adaptable and transformable device connecting necessary places and creating new spaces and activities.
Taking in advance main points(attractions) in the city and the site, it is decided to create connection between Montjuic, center of the city and port(arriving ships). The communication with Montjuic, as an important touristic point, was created over central points activities(place where devices are crossing). Those emerging points are depending on the amount of people where they are capable to create upper ground and underground connections.
The main device’s characteristics are transformation, movement, rotation, extension, adaptation, multi-functionality. Device is adaptable to any shape/size of the arriving ships(arriving islands). Depending on the size of the ship device can be duplicated horizontally or vertically. The device is inspired in a musical instrument called the accordion. Its main purpose is to expand and contract to create music, and has millions of possibilities of geometrical forms.
The device has a functionality of change, transformation, expansion and especially, taking in consideration the idea of Rhizome, adaptation. If a rhizome is separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. The plant uses the rhizome to store starches, proteins, and other nutrients. This idea is applied to the port and people circulating inside of it.
The port of Barcelona is a large space, but despite of its size, it will have a lot of limitations in 100 years with enormous cities merging into Barcelona and becoming part of its culture and entertainment development. Our idea is to solve this scale problem with our Rhizome Device.
Depending of the type of activities and functions we create a network that connects the most important points on the site. According to situation, device is able to transform and adapt horizontally and vertically. We create static and dynamic points. Possition of points allows adjustment to various of situations.
Different concepts have an influence on organizing, so in some sections the biggest concentration of connection is on the land while the other ones are more concentrated in the water. No matter what kind/size of ships or floating islands are comming to the city, device is ready to attach. On the other hand, in situations when nothing is coming, it is creating different spaces for activities represented in any time of day or night (night clubs, casinos, open cinemas, showrooms, sport and recreation, restaurants etc.)
Main static and dynamic points on different levels organized according to different concept situations. This kind of mapping is helping to understand better what are the possible ways of device transformation on the whole territory but keeping the main, primary concept at each part of seven different sections. There we observed that the device has possibility to adapt very easy to any kind of form and any kind of purpose. It is achieved by its duplicating, opening, half-opening, transforming, merging. Static points helped us to understand where our structure should be more solid, while on the other side, dynamic points allows us to be more creative in terms of possible scenarios that could happen in the future.
For start-up and operation of such a complex system, it is necessary to plan meaningful production and use of energy. The project is designed as a self-sufficient from the energy point of view. In this regard, the main sources of energy have been observed in constant movement and circulation of the large number of people through the system, as well as the apparent force that produced the upcoming big floating island. So, two main systems were established.
Piezoelectric floors (capable to harvest energy from human movement): Piezoelectricity is electrical energy produced from mechanical pressure (including motions such as walking). When pressure is applied to an object, a negative charge is produced on the expanded side and a positive charge on the compressed side. Once the pressure is relieved, electrical current flows across the material.
Wave power floating system: Wave energy is produced when electricity generators are placed on the surface of the ocean. The energy provided is most often used in desalination plants, power plants and water pumps. Energy output is determined by wave height, wave speed, wavelength, and water density. The exchange of energy is seen through three key scenarios.
1. The common scenario with daily various activities at the port, where the possibility of organizing different events a higher concentration of people and activities contributing to the creation of the energy needed to maintain the system.
2. Incoming island that creates waves and thus provides the necessary power to create energy that is directed to the bed of the system towards the approaching island.
3. Big island in the harbor where the huge exchange of people going in both directions and thereby gets the necessary energy from their movement, by sensitive floors, for the contraction of such a large system after the island leaves port.
Barcelona is a city full of magic, culture, tourism and cruises. Its large capability of receiving transit passengers of the entire world and positioning its port as number one in the Mediterranean Sea makes it unique and spectacular. Our theory of growth will probably one day become a reality. Tourism is growing exponentially, amount of people also, but land is not growing… so the oceans will surely become areas where the land will tend to expend. Sensations, adventures and feelings are our bases of device where the main idea is to connect people. We are all creating memories by a serial of changing and evolving connections and networks in a new territory of experience. Our device would have the capability of transforming into a different kind of entertainment, such as cinemas, clubs, platforms, simple passages, a store, a circuit of energy, a scene for a concert… The aim was to transform Barcelona into the city of the future, the city that will be able to connect moving cities and receive them. Barcelona will have multifaceted activities that will transform the history of the port. In 100 years we will have a city of hospitals in the middle of the pacific, a city of casinos in the Atlantic, a city of Disney in the Mediterranean… we will have the ocean with mini cities moving throughout the world.
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BOOKLET LINK:
http://issuu.com/tamaraivanovic/docs/last_booklet