Contemporary urban interventions in Girona

In a public space project, the specificities and scale of interventions vary greatly. In order to capture different ways of doing things in a tour with a certain logical sense of territory, and also with a sufficiently broad temporal scope, a series of works have been selected that apparently have nothing to do with each other beyond certain strategies or attitudes, but always with the perspective of improving what already exists.

These strategies for revealing hidden or underlying realities are clearly necessary after forty years of dictatorship in which public space was decidedly neglected. There was no interest in places that encouraged gathering, community or protest. At the same time, there was a desire to promote car culture, which ruled the streets and squares, encouraging the emerging middle class to seek second homes where they could find respite from the dreariness of the cities.

Thus, walls are being restored and converted into walking routes in Girona, the relationship with water is being celebrated by harmoniously integrating the irrigation canal into the urban space in Banyoles, and abandoned plots and declining streets in Olot are being given new life.

10

2