On the 5th of May, the first edition of Model. Festival of Architecture of Barcelona was inaugurated. An event organised jointly by Barcelona City Council and the Architects' Association of Catalonia (COAC) that brings us closer to experimental architecture and helps us to rethink how we want to live together through new city models and new imaginaries.
The meeting is a prelude to a well-deserved announcement of the UIA-Unesco World Architecture Capital of Barcelona 2026. It is an invitation to ask ourselves what this designation means in a diverse and global society, and at a time when the city model must be redefined, redesigned and revised at all scales in order to respond to the multiple systemic crises of our time. For these reasons, the main focus of this first edition is the idea of re-growing.
What conflicts, internal and external, will cities have to face? Will we be able to continue constructing buildings, streets, squares and parks in the same way as we have done in the past? With what materials? With what energy? Adapted to what temperatures, on what scale, for whom? - are some of the main questions that this festival, led by the artistic directors Eva Franch I Gilabert, Beth Galí and the cultural researcher José Luis de Vicente - and joined by the curators Ethel Baraona (Model Books), Álex Giménez (Model Thinking), Nuria Moliner, Eva Serrat and Francesc Pla (Installations) - seeks to investigate.
The proposed activities are aimed at all audiences, with languages and formats so diverse that they allow for collective reflection in a participatory framework. During the inauguration, the five ephemeral architecture installations (MAIO, LEA Atelier and TAKK Architecture, Ojo Estudio, FLEXOARQUITECTURA and ELISAVA) and a series of augmented reality installations (Queer de Triomf, Landlord Open House, The auguries, The square at the end of the metaverse, Colon-ising Port and CIUTAT SAFAREIG) were already available.
During the coming days there will be debates divided into three areas: "Model Thinking", a series of talks and panel discussions with local and international participants; "The Barcelona Protocol", which presents a manifesto of intentions within "X-Change Model: CPH/BCN"; and "Model Hour", which will bring informal debates to the spaces of the ephemeral architecture installations. In addition, there will be the two exhibitions "99+ Imaginary" at the Enric Miralles Foundation and "CPH/BCN" at the DHUB (a selection of an important group of projects from the cities of Copenhagen and Barcelona, nominated since 1988 for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award).
Model Books will also be available, a selection of publications from different international publishers available in Plaça Reial that promote and disseminate works and ideas in the field of architecture, and itineraries, a collection of podcasts recorded in immersive format in the form of audio guides to listen to through open platforms. There will be visits to different key points of the city, workshops for all tastes that allow citizens to temporarily put themselves in the shoes of an architect, 10 architecture festivities, one for each of the city's districts, and the BARQ-Barcelona International Architecture Film Festival.
All this was carried forward by more than 120 invited participants from all over the world, including Maarten Gielen (ROTOR), Carolyn Steel, Rafael Moneo, Carme Pinós, Rose George, Reinier de Graaf (OMA), Amica Dall/Asemejo, Elizabeth Duval, Battle I Roig, La Col, Cooking Sections, Camilla van Deurs, Jill Stoner, Ricky Burdett, Maria Rubert, Josep Maria Montaner, Peris+Toral, Anna & Eugeni Bach, Elisenda Solsona, Areti Markopoulou, among many others.
Through the five installations of ephemeral architecture located in a circuit of Ciutat Vella, starting with Plaça de Catalunya, Sant Antoni slab, Plaça Idrissa Diallo, Passeig de Lluís Companys and Plaça Reial, the five major themes of this edition of the festival are explored, each one rooted in a space of the city: Between-Classes, Between-Cultures, Between-Species, Between-Generations and Between-Matters. These were undoubtedly the focus of the public's attention. Get a first glimpse of the ephemeral architecture installations below.
Ark of Coexistence / Ronda de Sant Antoni
Team: LEA Atelier and TAKK Architecture
Walking along the platform left by the old temporary market of Sant Antoni, a mobile artefact houses a multitude of trees, plants, shrubs and insects. The ark reminds us of the urgent need to create public spaces to reverse the effects of global warming and stimulate biodiversity.
The installation incorporates species from diverse climates, altitudes and landscapes from all over the world and includes hosts of many kinds: from species capable of absorbing ten times more CO2 than usual to edible species that open up new possibilities for our food sovereignty, or capable of calling in other agents through the establishment of mutualistic, tenant or symbiotic relationships.
Urban Kitchen / Plaza Cataluña
Team: MAIO
This is an urban kitchen in the centre of Plaça de Catalunya that is the setting for various culinary activations where new models on the relationship between food and the city, its climate impact and its link to social justice will be presented and discussed.
During the inauguration, Cooking-Sections performed - a team formed by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe that examines the systems that organise the world through food. Also, with the participation of Plataforma Aprofitem els Aliments and Comedores Populares of Lima.
Reversing the Pyramid / Plaza Idrissa Diallo
Team: Ojo Estudio
The former Plaza Antonio López has been called Plaza Idrissa Diallo since March this year. It embodies the city's colonial legacy and has been the scene of one of the first exercises in symbolic re-signification. The empty pedestal offers an opportunity to mark on the urban fabric the imprints left by the different forms of domination and exploitation that still segment the city.
The installation, a scaffolding structure supporting a wooden surface, proposes to reverse this class pyramid and raise on this pedestal a collective public space for everyone - a place to reflect and see the city and the sea from another perspective.
Chronotopic Memory / Paseo de Lluís Companys
Team: FLEXOARQUITECTURA
This installation presents a reflection on the material flow of past and future architecture.
Faced with the rubble of architecture due to change of use, is it possible to assess its permanence and reprogramming? What other programmes could the Palace of Fine Arts or the former courthouse accommodate today? What architecture could have taken advantage of the floors, furniture or windows of the courthouse? What could have been done with the triple organ and the Montjuic stones of the load-bearing walls of the Palace?
Faced with the city's empty plots, which are in transition between an overthrown architecture and another to come, would it be possible to activate them temporarily while respecting the diversity and richness of their spontaneously growing flora and fauna?
Occupy the centre with the word / Plaza Real
Team: ELISAVA | Roger Paez (direction), Manuela Valtchanova, Albert Fuster, Toni Montes
The Plaza Real becomes the centre of debates on architecture, city, design and society. The temporary intervention in the square seeks to generate optimal conditions where both encounters and disagreements, both consensus and controversy -always through words- can take place.
For this reason, the fountain of the Three Graces in the Plaza Real will be covered, temporarily occupying the centre of the square with a structure that encourages its appropriation by any citizen who wants to take the floor.
'Occupy the centre with the word' has an infrastructural as well as a symbolic meaning-it is a spatial system that facilitates debate by temporarily transforming public space and, at the same time, it is a manifesto for an open city.
