From 1945 to 1965 three quarters of urbanized land in Europe was addressed to residential uses (both planned –Housing States – and spontaneous –Marginal Urbanization- processes). This unprecedented phenomena produced a great impact in the periphery of many European cities, where still today there’s a lack of basic conditions for urbanity and environmental balance.
Today, once the ferocious postmodern criticism to Modernism was overcome, conditions for improvement and recovery of these outer territories need to be established. The commonly spread metropolitan scope of european cities become the opportunity to rethink some of the housing projects produced in Europe during the post-war period. Topics such as functional metropolitan complexity, relation to new infrastructures or environmental responsibility will be the main stream of design criteria for future interventions in these neighbourhoods.
In June 2011 the second edition of Eco-Rehab workshop will face the challenge of revisiting tthree of the most remarkable episodes of Mass Housing States in Barcelona’s Metropolitan Area: Bon Pastor, Ciutat Meridiana, and Polígon Sud-Oest del Besòs. Students and tutors from several European Universities will be committed with the proposal of specific strategies of intervention in both Districts.
