Survival Through Design

Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes

2019

Garcia-Fuentes, Josep-Maria. 2019. “Survival Through Design.” World Architecture/Shijie Jianzhu 351 (09): 100-105.

ISSN 1002-4832

“The Universitat Pompeu Fabra was founded in 1990 with the aim of establishing a brand-new world-leading academic and research institution in the city of Barcelona. […] Instead of building a new campus, the new university was inserted in the middle of the old city […] It contemplated the use of a few closed-off buildings scattered in the old city, including abandoned palaces and ruined hotels located next to Las Ramblas […]The project by architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg sits within these successful interventions. It consists of a set of three connected buildings that are the outcome of a restricted competition for the whole site organised in 1996. […] Navarro Baldeweg in Barcelona reminds us of the role that technology and architecture play in mediating our relation with nature and the built environment. It is only through design that we, as human beings, and our cities, will survive and will keep memories alive as architecture regenerates degraded urban fabrics and continuously mediates their interpretation.”