06.04.18, ETSAC, A CORUÑA

We all agree that the sheer volume of empty or underused sites, buildings and apartments in Coruna is directly compromising the urban quality of the city. New multidisciplinary approaches are needed to develop strategies for inclusive and sustainable urban renewal

• The universal declaration of human rights enshrines adequate housing as a fundamental right, what strategies are there to claim that right? Taken literally, what are the consequences?
  
• What form of design thinking can help recapture spatial assets for inclusion into public life and fundamental benefits to society?
  
• What are spatial needs and how can they be identified and designed for new models of habitation?
  
• What innovative models for advocacy using design and artistic interventions are available to help break current deadlocks between formal systems and the lived experience?
  
• What role can social media, urban simulation, new imaginaries, story telling play in this?
  
• What new models for ownership, or membership, can help integrate marginalised populations into the city? How is sharing luxury?
  
• What can be said about the difference between commodity value and use value? What is the optimal balance between private, social and state owned real estate? Is affordable based on price or percentage?
  
• What structural amendments are needed in order to implement theoretical concepts? What parallel systems are feasible? What are preferable outcomes?
  
• What strategies and tools are needed to create mixed use, socially inclusive and vibrant cities open to all? 
• What actor-networks are involved in the different case studies and how should they be affected from now to after the intervention? Can squatting be engaged constructively? How do you bring all social classes, political opinions, ages, genders, races...etc in a process?

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Todos coincidimos en que o gran volume de edificios e apartamentos baleiros na Coruña está comprometendo directamente a calidade urbana da cidade. Novos enfoques multidisciplinares son necesarios para desenvolver estratexias para a renovación urbana inclusiva e sostible

• A declaración universal dos dereitos humanos consagra a               vivenda adecuada como un dereito fundamental. ¿Que                     estratexias hai para reclamar ese dereito? Tomados literalmente     ¿Cales son as consecuencias?

• ¿Que forma de pensamento de deseño pode axudar a recuperar     os recursos espaciais para a súa inclusión na vida pública e os       beneficios fundamentais para a sociedade?

• ¿Cales son as necesidades espaciais e como se poden identificar   e deseñar para novos modelos de habitar?

• ¿Que modelos innovadores de defensa mediante o deseño e           intervencións artísticas están dispoñibles para axudar a evitar os     prazos actuais entre os sistemas formais ea experiencia vivida?

• ¿Que papel poden desempeñar as redes sociais, a simulación         urbana, os novos imaxinarios e o story telling nesto?

• ¿Que novos modelos de propiedade poden axudar a integrar         poboacións marxinadas na cidade? ¿Como se comparte o luxo?

• ¿Que se pode dicir sobre a diferenza entre valor de mercadoría e   valor de uso? ¿Cal é o equilibrio ideal entre o sector inmobiliario     privado, social e estatal? ¿É accesible en función do prezo ou         porcentaxe?

• ¿Que esixencias estruturais son necesarias para implementar conceptos teóricos? ¿Que sistemas paralelos son factibles? Cales son os resultados preferibles?

• ¿Que estratexias e ferramentas son necesarias para crear uso         mixto, cidades socialmente abertas e vibrantes abertas a todos?

• ¿Que redes de actores están envolvidas nos diferentes casos de     estudio e como se deben afectar a partir de agora ata a                   intervención? ¿Pode ocuparse de forma convincente? ¿Como         xuntar todas as clases sociais, opinións políticas, idades,                 xéneros, etnias ... etc nun proceso?

Javier Harguindey

Interested in uncovering the links between forces that shape the urban environment (social, technical,…) with focus on the demographics and data.

Interested in building up a research methodology to address key questions on identification and classification of the issue. Interested in understanding what has the "crisis" left behind and to establish a scientific method by which to address it. Interested in exposing academia to "real life" contexts and setting the teaching conditions to ensure that the classroom is not committed to supporting such practice that facilitates such crisis.

Scott Lloyd

Interested in understanding the actions, networks and forces that give shape to the city. Interested in developing new models of applied research to investigate the issue. Interested in the format of teaching to inform and empower the next generation of city makers.

Xosé Lois

Interested in analysing what can be done with existed buildings with the notion that each example is of itself a particular context. This takes into account the relations between different components of the systems that shape the building context.

Population and the role of Galicia in state policy where real state is one of the main economic motor of economic growth.

This is a very complex situation, we cannot propose just one question, as the project is develops, questions will appear. What kind of economic model we want? Rental or production? What kind of country do we want? We destroy our productive model and now we have a speculative model based on construction of space

Hans-Christian Rufer

Interested to create access to affordable housing. Interested in a multidisciplinary approach that corresponds to the complex environment of housing. Interested to use the architecture studio as a place to integrate the diverse range of partners into site specific projects.

Dr. Estefanía Calo

Interested in recovering links between the right to housing and the right to the City: both are under threat and both are required in order to achieve urban justice. Interested in establishing Empty Coruña? is a first stage to develop knowledge about how to resist this systemic threat against basic citizen rights.

Anxo Calvo

Is the market able to solve the problem by itself or should we be looking for regulatory solutions? What regulatory frameworks are available and appropriate for Coruña?

Roberto Castro Thome

Interested in the question of regulation as nothing is possible from a single bank with even the ethical banks that are trying to do something having no success. Furthermore interested in the Valuing agencies as they overvalued housing during the creation of the bubble.

Fernando Bruna

Interested in researching the current conditions as an environment issue focusing on energy and economic point of view.

Ángeles Longadera

Interested in researching energy efficiency, energy “pobreza”

Manuel García Docampo

Interested in investigating a research methodology that encompasses the three dimensions of: Agency – Processes – Objects

José María Cardesín Diz

Interested in researching urban growth and development of 7 cities in Galicia during the crisis in order to compare them with A Coruña

Ricard Leonardo

Interested in researching the formal administrative tools utilised to frame and criminalize “illegal” occupation. Research should take a critical point of view and investigate what people do by themselves to solve the problem.

Architect / Activist

Research Team

Sonia R. Beltrán

Juan Froján Castro

Estefanía Tarrío
Maneiro

Beatriz Fernández Armada

Estéfano Oliveira Pereira

Julia Fernández Sáez

Lucía Escrigas Rodríguez

Michael Juan

Sergio Artime Muñiz

Paolo Paradiso

Team of young architects and sociologists closely tied to the university. Our main interests are urban sociology, understanding urban processes and how they affect local populations from a social point of view.

In this project we aim to approach the challenge from a multidisciplinary perspective in order to assess the real impact that the crisis has had on the city. Not only on the economic and construction processes, but also to understand how this has had an impact on the people’s life and their relations, both social and political ones.

We truly believe that this research must be done from a perspective of fundamental rights, like the right to housing and the right to the city. And for that we understand that the investigation must be played out from both an multidisciplinary and transdisciplanary perspective.

We also are interested in an a project approach that extends beyond an academic perspective and have the opportunity to learn and share experiences with the citizens. Our participation in Empty Coruña? is focused on the research of the “whys” and the “how this affect us”, but we also want to pose a sonorous “and now what?”

Interested in the human side of the crisis as hauman rights are being undermined. Drawing from experiences of colleagues who have suffered directly from the housing problems.

Alberto Varela

Interested in mapping and understanding the effect of the crisis in the urban context in order to visualize the problem.  In order to identify the problem the social point of view should be taken into account through information tools and extend the study to other cities.

Cartolab UDC

Santiago López
 

Interested in researching technical approaches to improving environmental issues and to minimize the environmental impact of empty buildings. There is a social interest in this approach.

We should complete empty buildings taking into account alternative materials and techniques and develop innovative environmental building techniques.