Ideas, strategies and projects that give rise to pilot projects. They tackle the challenges raised by the stakeholders involved and which are found in particular places in Barcelona or Medellín.
The 26th Premio Habitácola turns the spotlight on abandoned, never inaugurated, semi-ruinous, underused architecture anywhere in the world but which emerged at a disturbing pace with the property boom in Spain. This great stock of semi-constructions associated with housing, outlines and expectant buildings, whether for their condition as unfinished or unusual products, is in a state of deep sleep, unaware of its potential.
There is an obvious need to organize in order to intervene in these unfinished housing landscapes, to turn them into sustainable, efficient, equitable environments by means of political, social and economic transformations that prevent the depredation of the territory, and which include architectural interventions.
The 26th Premio Habitácola is a call for proposed actions or interventions to awaken from their coma these buildings, infrastructures and outlines, all of these places in a state of shock where housing forms a central part of the argument. What is important is not so much that they become what someone once thought they should be as that they become a useful, reinhabitable presence, socializable places, that recover meaning and importance, and re-join the flows of information, people and goods.
The proposal for action is based on the dwelling or directed at the dwelling, along with the idea that can transform this architecture or landscape—that is, resignify them. Intervening in a ruin, appropriating it, involves a democratic process of giving an opinion and taking up a position with regard to what was already there.
In short, working on ruins, which means working with what is useless, with redoubts. Returning to ruins as a mechanism for overcoming. Working in ruins and with ruins, going to ruin. Go to ruin!
