Portfolio 2024

PORTFOLIO

Emma Maev O’Connell

LUNCH BREAK

Master’s Thesis, 2022/2023

prof: Francesc Pla y Ignacio Costales with: Artur Roig

The project aims to restore industrial activity in two existing buildings located in the Agricultural Area of Baixa Tordera (Espai Agrari de la Baixa Tordera), an agricultural landscape that we intend to preserve and promote as one of the largest food producers in Catalonia.

Firstly, a regional intervention is proposed: taking advantage of the fact that the R1 railway line crosses the entire Espai Agrari, we propose to enable it for the transportation of produce/goods, in order to connect the Baixa Tordera area to the freight line BarcelonaGirona —via the interchange station MaçanetMassanes—, thus promoting the centrality and interconnectivity of this productive space.

Secondly, we propose to implement a programme of cooperation including productive spaces for food processing, thus helping to promote and increase the value of locally produced products. For this purpose, we have decided to use two existing and disused spaces found in the area, which we believe could be strategic locations for the project. The first one, the Molí Vell (or Molí de la Pedrera), on the border between the municipalities of Palafolls and Malgrat de Mar, is an old flour mill; the second, the Nylstar in Blanes, a textile factory. In both sites there used to be branches of the main railway line that allowed the transportation of products to and from the production points. The proposal is to restore them in order to connect the two buildings to the main railway line —and

from there to the freight network— so as to make the transport of food more sustainable, faster and better optimised.

In both buildings, we conceive a number of uses related to the world of agriculture: food industry, agricultural cooperatives, spaces for small farmers and the direct sale of products, cooking and experimental workshops, culinary school. Between all these, close relations are to be generated that will make the industrial processes more visible to the public — through openings, vertical cores, courtyards — and meeting points will be provided where workers, users and visitors meet and which, through the role of food, become a place of conviviality and urban vitality. They include the large dining room on the ground floor, which serves both as a canteen for residents and workers of the industry and the cooperative, and as a restaurant open to the public; and the cooking workshops on the first and second floors, intended as ateliers for experimentation and product handling and tasting for users, who can access them directly from the food shop (agrobotiga) on the ground floor.

The idea underlying the project is that food in its different forms is capable of activating and transforming the space and its surroundings, of turning them into a place of exchange and coexistence, diluting the limits between inside and outside/interior and exterior and generating relations between restaurant and patio, dining room and terrace, canteen and street, building and city.

Malgrat de Mar Blanes Palafolls Tordera

SalCosta, Mercabarna, Barcelona AltCamp, Girona, Catalunya

Vitamina A / Seleni Isoleucina

OusRoig, Tortosa, Catalunya

Cafè Saula,Snt Feliude Llobregat

Vic,Catalunya, Espanya Carxofa Prat, Catalunya, Espanya

OliBorges, Tàrrega, Catalunya

Garet, Tona, Catalunya

Casa Tarradellas, Gurb Arròs Montisà, Amposta, Catalunya FormatgeMasel

Nestlé, Girona Almeria, Espanya Comunitat Valenciana, España

La llet s'envasa a Vidreres

La carn prové de Vic

Clorur Sodi Calci Riboflavina Fósfor Vitamina D Omega 3 Biotina B7 Magnesi / Lisina Ferro Cobalt Cobalamina

Manganès Iode / Fenilalamina Leucina

Vitamina K Niacina B3 / Omega 6 / Treonina

Àcid Fòlic B9 Triptòfan

Potassi Molibde

Potassi

Vitamina C Àcid Fòlic B9 / Lisina Histidina

Vitamina E / Coure Valina

Tiamina B1

Crom Zinc / Metionina

Vitamina C Lisina

Carxofes - MandarinesSíndriaCafè - Enciam Tomàquet Sal

Xocolata negre Arròs Cigrons - Mongetes Oli d'oliva

Vitamina B6 Ácid Pantotènic B5 Pa - Formatge semicurat

Ous de gallina PollastreVedellaFuet - Sardines GambesLlet envasada

ZONA FRANCA EN MOVIMIENTO

Taller Temático, 2020/2021

prof: Carme Ribas y Ton Salvadó with: Artur Roig

The central idea of the project is the transversality of Avinguda Joan Carles I with respect to the physical limits imposed by the infrastructures, in this case the Ronda Litoral, which runs on the surface, and the train tracks, which widen close to the goods station (Terminal Intermodal), creating a barrier between the area of Marina del Prat Vermell (Avinguda Joan Carles I) and Zona Franca (Carrer Número 2 and Avinguda Parc Logístic). Currently, it is only possible to cross this barrier through a single tunnel.

The heart of this transversality will be the new BRT station —Parc Logístic— and the footbridge, which will connect the two ends of the tracks and ring road and link the BRT station with the two adjoining neighbourhoods and the metro station Parc Logístic, thus providing the area with faster and more direct connections with the centre of Barcelona.

The buildings that are placed above the ring road and the railway tracks are inserted into their surroundings by taking the proportion and size of the existing warehouses. The new “warehouses” will house different functions, consistent with the surroundings but also responding to the new scenarios we intend to create on the site. At the two ends, two buildings are placed which, in different ways and with different programmes, allow to complete the route.

LIMITS

Urbanistica III, 2018/2019

prof: Jorge Perea

with: Alia Bennani

The process of deconstruction neither undoes nor destroys, rather, it allows us to rethink and redefine the limits of spaces. The project aims to intervene in the street by recognising its existing elements and enhancing them.

Following our study of the site, we identify three different areas where we believe it is necessary, due to the nature of the spaces themselves, to act differently. In this way, we define a sequence of different spaces. The connection between the street and the surrounding spaces is determined by visual elements: the degree of transparency between spaces, determined by walls and fences, the choice of paving and its boundaries, the presence of greenery.

The introduction of vegetation in the form of urban gardens is intended to relate the street to its surroundings, emphasising the transition between urban space and the countryside. Taken out of its context and placed in this space, maintaining its geometry or adapting it to the space, the “orchard” element acts as a physical and visual connection between the street and the school and between the street and the sports centre.

The choice of paving is that of mass concrete. A material already present on-site as it is used for sports courts, it allows a certain geometric flexibility in its design; its joints determine the geometry of the place, bringing the guidelines of the courts or of the spaces tangent to it to the street. The decision in each area concerns the boundaries of the paving: whether it should extend beyond the street, physically linking two spaces with different functions, or whether it should be used only in the street, and the way in which its joints are designed.

On Jacques Derrida and Deconstructivism:

Deconstructivism is not synonymous with “destruction”, however. It is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word ‘analysis’ itself, which etymologically means “to undo” —a virtual synonym for “to de-construct.” [...] If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text’s critical difference from itself.

The Critical Difference (1981), Barbara Johnson

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK STUDENT VERSION

PRODUCED

LIVING TOGETHER (around the staircase)

Proyectos IV

prof: Pau Bajet

with: Albert Jiménez Rodríguez

With a residential programme conceived as a co-living space, the project is placed on three plots, formerly abandoned or residual spaces, located on three adjoining blocks, crossed by the railway tracks.

The idea is to fragment the residential programme into separate units in order to reduce the scale of the co-living spaces, and to connect them with one another on the lower floors. This strategy allows, through the use of four typologies, to resolve the three plots. The buildings function in a similar way in section, seeking in each plot a transition between the more public and the more private spaces, located in the upper floors.

On the ground floor are the premises facing the street and, overlooking the interior courtyard, the multifunctional rooms and services of each building; on the first and second floors are different typologies of accessible rooms and apartments. Above these, the separate units develop in height through a central staircase that arranges the spaces around it, shared or individual rooms, each one at a different height, generating a Raumplan system where these typologies alternate indefinitely. Ultimately, the rooms as a whole form a shared “house” whose core is the staircase. Finally, the rooftops are also designed as terraces for public use and urban gardens.

PRODUCED

LA CIMBRA EN MOVIMIENTO

Intervention in Viña Lanciano (Spain)

Concéntrico 10

Centering is the temporary wooden structure that is put in place in order to build a stone arch. It is both the genesis and the negative of the final structure, and disappears once it has fulfilled its function.

The reintroduction and reinterpretation of the centering in our contemporary landscape allows to achieve the following in a single gesture:

1. To link the cultural heritage of the place to its present identity

The Mantible bridge belongs to the mediaeval road connecting Pamplona and Nájera, referring to it is to refer to the historical ties of the territory. To place the intervention in the midst of the vineyard is to take part in its cultural and productive present. To combine the past and the present in a single image.

2. Recovering the formal landmark of the arch and reintroducing it into the landscape

Human landscape is defined through its constructive types; the goal is to return the collapsed arches that once formed the bridge to the present landscape.

3. Maintaining the nature of the centering structure

The intervention maintains two basic values of the centering: time (it is temporary) and material (wood).

How to make this historical shape interact with today’s visitor?

We introduce the possibility of the structure being movable. Eight wheels are placed at the foot of the falsework and stiffened at its base. By means of two winches placed at the ends of the path, the structure can be moved along it. In this way, the arches move between the vineyards, propelled by the visitors who become shapers of the landscape. The distance between the two winches allows for four arches to be inscribed, precisely the number of arches missing from the Mantible bridge. In our contemporaneity, the bridge becomes an artefact that moves through the landscape.