Studio Architecture & Territory: “Floodscapes”
Collective spaces for resilience in flood-prone territories: Horta Sud in Valencia
Tutors: Ignacio Galán & Xavier Méndez Abad
Semester 1: Exploring urban cultures
Language: ENG
Campus: Ghent
Framework:
The increasing impacts of climate change emphasise the urgent need to rethink the capacity of cities to adapt to challenges associated with extreme events such as floods and droughts. Conventional urban planning and design, centred on purely infrastructural solutions, proves insufficient in the face of unpredictable and severe flooding. This context demands architectural and urban design interventions centred on socio-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity of flood-prone territories. This Design Studio approaches such a critical context, facing reconstruction processes as an opportunity to rethink the built environment and the broader territory, addressing issues such as environmental loss, productivity, collective spaces, and social facilities.
The studio will reflect on the complex challenges of flood-prone areas and explore context-based strategies and spatial interventions to increase adaptation and enhance socio-ecological resilience, emphasising water-sensitive design and social infrastructures. Collective spaces are the focus of intervention as they are considered critical elements of resilience. They articulate the social and ecological dimensions of the territory, provide places of encounter and care, and offer opportunities for community-building, becoming strategic nodes during the recovery process following flooding events.
Satallite picture taken after the DANA storm, showing the huge flooded territory around Valencia. (Source: COPERNICUS)
Studio Context:
The peri-urban area of Valencia, particularly the territory of Horta Sud, heavily impacted by the recent DANA, is a relevant case study for this Design Studio approach. In 2024, several municipalities located along the Rambla del Poyo were affected by extreme flooding that resulted in 228 human casualties, heavy damage to infrastructures, spaces, and buildings, as well as socio-economic and environmental impacts. The combination of heterogeneous urbanised areas, flooding-prone farming land, productive spaces, and the ongoing recovery process offers an opportunity to analyse and develop spatial strategies that could be potentially applied at other flooding-prone territories. We will explore how architectural and spatial interventions can shape collective spaces to improve the social and ecological resilience in Horta Sud.
Aerial view showing the destruction created by the floodings in the neighbourhood of Paiporta. (Source: Ángel García)
Methodology:
The assignment will combine team- and individual work. We will work at different scales. In the first half of the semester, students will explore the context, analysing and interpreting specific territorial samples to formulate a set of principles for intervention (Contextual Explorations, Analysis, and Urban Strategies). In the second half of the course, each student will develop a specific architectural/spatial intervention for a chosen site, while reflecting on its impact in the larger territory.
This studio establishes an international collaboration with the schools of architecture and urban design of Universidad Politècnica de Valencia, and Universität Stuttgart, who will simultaneously work in the same study area, and with whom several exchange activities will be organised during the semester. The results of the studio are aimed to be locally exhibited and discussed.
A group of volunteers removes the mud that covered the streets after the flooding. (Source: elconfidencial)
Selected bibliography:
Anguelovski, I., Shi, L., Chu, E., Gallagher, D., Goh, K., Lamb, Z., … & Teicher, H. (2016). Equity impacts of urban land use planning for climate adaptation: Critical perspectives from the global north and south. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 36(3), 333-348.
Corner, J. (1999). “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention” in Dennis Cosgrove, ed., Mappings, London: Reaktion, pp. 213-252.
de-Solà-Morales, M. (2008). Public Spaces / Collective Spaces. In A matter of things (pp. 184–191). NAi Publishers.
Jongman, B., Osmanoglou, D., Van Zanten, B. T., Gonzalez Reguero, B., Macfarlane, D. M., Duma, L. J., … & Rubinyi, S. L. (2021). A catalogue of nature-based solutions for urban resilience.
Klinenberg, E. (2018). Palaces for the people: How social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarisation, and the decline of civic life. Crown.
Mathur, A., & Da Cunha, D. (2014). Design in the Terrain of Water. Applied Research+ Design Publishing.
Orff, K. (2016). Toward an urban ecology. New York: Monacelli Press.Sennett, R. (2013). The Public Realm. Borders and Boundaries. Essay online: http://www.richardsennett.com
Viganò, P. (2012). Urbanism and ecological rationality. In Resilience in ecology and urban design: linking theory and practice for sustainable cities (pp. 407-426). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.