Fragment and inclusionurban architecture in contemporary Barcelona

Resumen

The main issue of the thesis is to discuss the method of building relationships between architecture and city through analyzing projects by Barcelona architects. There are two hypothesizes of the thesis: fragment and inclusion. Fragment has two meanings; one refers to the idea of being part of the city. Here fragment not only means artifact, but also can be those topographic elements. In one hand, use the idea of fragment to define elements that compose the city because fragment gives a better understanding of being part of the entire system; in the other hand, the idea of fragment has the meaning of individuality of each element itself, which means it has its own value and micro-identity that does not suvive depending on its mother system. In the meanwhile, every unit of fragment has equal value with others. And fragment also relates with another aspect of the concept, the fragmentation. In post-modern era, the knowledge of understanding the world became more fragmental, more attention paid to details and partial of things, but less to the overlook of the systematic panorama. To define fragment in short, is to say that the meaning of fragment in the thesis is recomposing the fragment of city, here is the fragment of Barcelona, by the way of fragmentation. Apart from the definition of fragment, the other word - inclusion concludes the result of the operation of recomposing. lt means the way architects include the fragment into their projects during the process of practicing. lt is not only a theoretical discussion about the importance and value of building the relationship between building and place, but more to discuss the process of how to select, translate and realize the implantation of fragment into the project when architects are facing to the storehouse of quite amount of fragments. In this thesis, I borrow theories of semiology and linguistic to define the concept of inclusion. Architecture can be seen as a media that delivers urban information to users and opens another window to see the view of the city. The value of architecture can be seen as the role of the communicative media. lf we understand the essence of "language" also a tool of communication, we can say architecture is a language, on we can see architecture as a sign. Being a sign, architecture must have its signifier and signified: the physical character of architecture is the signifier, the fragment of city is the signified of the sign, and inclusion is the process of signification. Through that methodology of linguistic, the process of signification - the inclusion - can be categorized into two main types, and sixsub-types. The two main types are classified according to the direct and indirect differences of the appearance of signified. Six sub-types refer to six different characters of operation that architects of Barcelona use in their practices. But it has to be clarified that this thesis is a thesis of projects, which pay most attention on the discussion of practical method of inclusion. In the chapter of six types shows the study of architectural operation methods linked with the relationship between architecture and fragment of city. They are six methods, or six models: collage, scalalize, detournement, interface, landform and superposition. Each one of them has its own characteristic, defined by the project, the site, the fragment and so on. All those models are analyzed in a similar structure. The selection of projects follows the basic rule of finding the different method of building the relationship, which ignores those criteria about scales, uses, programs, designers and so on. All the cases are located in Barcelona and done by local architects, romantically speaking, this thesis is like a journey of deconstruct and reform the perspective view of contemporary architecture of Barcelona.