Catalonia leads the shift toward better water management

BarcelonaThe Water parliaments with which Catalonia participates in the Venice Architecture Biennale are quite an experience. The curators, Eva Franch and the founders of the Takk studio, Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño, have created a friendly and colorful space in the nautical warehouses that are the usual headquarters of the Catalan delegation promoted by the Institut Ramon Llull in Venice. One might think they are inside a drop of water, on the surface of a river, or at the bottom of the sea. The installation is moving and provides a moment of calm amid the noise of the Biennial, but this does not detract from the forcefulness with which the curators raise the need for a new relationship with water. Instead of seeing water solely as a resource, for Franch, it is about approaching it as "a material to be built, cared for, and researched."

A constant in the seven cases from Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands represented in the exhibition is the need to adapt laws and technical codes to the challenges that have arisen with the climate emergency. "The regulations are not prepared for the changes that come with the climate emergency; this happens here and in many other places around the world," says Mireia Luzárraga, who on her trip to Puerto Rico with Columbia University students discovered that the regulations on the delimitation of the maritime-terrestrial zone date back to when the island was adjacent to the island of the country. "The regulations must adapt to climate change, and perhaps we should find regulations from other southern perspectives that allow us to adapt to this reality," she emphasizes. "The project also looks at legal loopholes," says Eva Franch, citing one of the exhibition's proposals: the creation, instead of a designation of origin, of a "designation of destination" to identify which countries the fruit grown by large producers in the Tierras de Lleida region, which requires exaggerated water consumption compared to local producers, goes to.

"The designation of destination is actually a legal proposal that the Generalitat (Catalan government) could implement in a few months. This responsibility to make this visible would already give us the ability to draw a picture of where the territory's water resources end up. We can't do this today because there's no transparency," explains Franch. For the director of the Institut Ramon Llull, Pere Almeda, the exhibition is "a reflection on how we address water scarcity at the global level and at the local level through architecture." "It's about trying to apply this collective intelligence that this year's Biennial curator, Carlo Ratti, calls for, to specific issues that affect us as a country," says Almeda.

Between laws, reality and speculation

The route of the exhibition Water parliaments It is made up of seven installations resulting from the "future workshops" that the commissioners held with water-related agents from all over the territory, starting with one entitled Waters of the world which is an online network that connects the reality of the Catalan Countries with the global situation. Some could be implemented immediately, such as highlighting the value of the 87 aquifers in the Balearic Islands by placing a ceramic plaque on buildings with the name of the aquifer they draw from. Likewise, the hydrosuction technique for transferring sediment to the other side of the dams and reservoirs that are suffocating the Ebro Delta, and the flags planted in the middle of crops to reveal their designation of origin in the Terres de Lleida region. And the "data sources" with which Barcelona residents could analyze the quality of their tap water and be more empowered with water resources. In the case of the Valencian Country, it is necessary to change the technical building code so that doors can open inwards and outwards, a gesture that could have saved lives during the DANA.

In contrast, the Pyrenees proposal is the most speculative: Pyrineucus-Eco-Hydrator It's a fictional robotic species that would be at the center of the Catalan National Forest Plan. Its job would be to cut down the spice trees that consume the most water and replace them with native ones. This would be a way to combat the imbalance caused by the increase in forest area due to the abandonment of agricultural land, as it has led to a reduction in river flow, put the survival of certain species at risk, and made the country more vulnerable to climate change. "The low economic profitability of forests has led private owners and public administrations to neglect their management," say the commissioners.

Water parliaments It also includes the publication of an innovative dictionary entitled 100 Words for Water: A Vocabulary"Water is part of the origin of life, it's part of our body, we're made of water," says the Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández. "And water is also part of the challenges of architecture, so through architecture and urban planning we can find answers to how we want to be in the future as a society and as groups. The perspective of Water parliaments It's very interesting because it goes from the local to the global. There's nothing more local than water. Water in Barcelona isn't the same as water in the Amazon or Galicia, but, on the other hand, we all know that there's only one water, as they say," the councilor emphasizes.

The most responsible architects plus the State

While the commissioners of Water parliaments vindicate radical imagination to create a more hopeful future. Those in the Spanish pavilion, Manuel Bouzas and Roi Salgueiro, showcase "the spearhead" of architects across Spain who are interested in reducing the environmental impact and waste of their buildings and using regenerative materials, as Roi Salgueiro says. Their project bears a term they coined, Internalities, that is, the ability of architects to "articulate robust territorial production ecosystems, not dependent on the outside and capable of balancing the relationships between ecologies and economies." This idea has five axes: "materials, trades, energy, waste, and emissions." Together, they overturned "our previous ways of practicing architecture and building."

The sixteen chosen buildings, ten of them Catalan and Balearic, were selected in a call that received around two hundred proposals. "The quality was very high," says the curator. "These buildings still represent a relatively small fraction within the construction landscape, but we hope that this attitude will become increasingly widespread. We think the exhibition highlights the quality of Spanish architectural production and the work of the people who are most sensitive to the decarbonization project."

The Catalan and Balearic works that can be seen in the Spanish pavilion arethe 6x6 wooden apartment block in Girona(from Bosch Capdeferro Arquitectura),the rehabilitation of the Flix agricultural cooperativeto convert it into a multipurpose and cultural space (by Camps Felips Arquitecturia); a house in Gautegiz-Arteaga (by Emiliano López Mónica Rivera Arquitectos); the 2104 social housing (by Harquitectes); the Loggia Baseliana pavilion in Switzerland (by Isla Architects);Moià Fire Station(by Josep Ferrando, Pedro García, Mar Puig and Manel Casellas),the Ca na Pau housein the Mallorcan town of Binissalem (by Munarq); 43 compacted earth social housing units in Ibiza (by Peris+Toral Arquitectes); The Day After house (by TAKK); and another house, Ca na Catalina y Joan, in Llubí, Mallorca (by TEd'A Arquitectes). These buildings are on display in the pavilion's central hall, and the surrounding areas feature various areas dedicated to topics such as wood as a construction material, energy production, the use of ceramics (represented by companies such as Fetdeterra and the Cumella workshop); waste management; and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.