Heritable Colony
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Full project title
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Project Description
Heritable Colony represents a 21st-century colony model, which learns from the history of the colonies, from their urban structure and their cultural potential, providing a new life to them, open to its natural and productive environment. Heritable Colony reuses existing infrastructure to generate a new and improved community with memory and pursues a social, productive, and ecological return to the territory while generating an urban production model for its community.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
Heritable Colony is a technological, social, and ecological model based on a cooperative scheme for the benefit of the community, the surrounding territory, and the enhancement of the cultural heritage. The proposal is a self-sufficient community that reuses and repurposes the existing build environment. On one side, the Colony will be powered by the production of hydrogen as clean energy, implementing a plant within the existing energy infrastructure that powered the colony back in the 19th century, reconfiguring it to its new use. On the other side, the adaptive reuse of the existing buildings will generate a more connected and productive community that will be a reference model to other colonies in the region and across Europe.
The project incorporates sustainability criteria into the process, reusing existing infrastructure, fostering the agriculture model in it, generating new quantitative jobs, improving the image of the colony, and regenerating the landscape. The model can be implemented in phases, be adaptable to a variety of programs and needs, and become suitable for implementation in other heritage sites of the same features.
The main objective of the proposal is to contribute to local progress by breaking with the previous Colony scheme and creating a green community that reconciles the built environment with nature. The success of this model is based on harmony with the surroundings and the inheritance of a colony. The proposal seeks restoration and adaptation to the native landscape, as well as a direct relationship between nature, community, and energy production. The promotion of the multifunctionality of the new spaces and facilities, and the improvement of infrastructures and accessibility are concepts that generate the eco-colony philosophy. This development allows for the barrier between industry and life to disappear, creating an environment where economic activity and social development progress simultaneously.
Key objectives for sustainability
The project proposes the use of a water cycle in the colony that will generate clean energy, foster agricultural production, and purify the Llobregat river. Water will be collected from the rain and the river to create clean energy through the existing hydraulic infrastructure, it will be purified by natural methods and reused to irrigate agricultural fields in the area or returned to the main course of the river. This process establishes the starting point for sustainable management of resources, acting as a filter to the natural environment in opposition to the previous industrial model, where resources were extracted from nature and pollution was provided in return. In addition, the existing built environment is retrofitted to promote an extended life for existing constructions, where the buildings can accommodate new uses that enhance the heritage.
The production cycle is presented as an economic, social, and environmental innovator for being a pioneer in the generation of green hydrogen, the energy of the future, as an initiative to promote the abandonment of the current use of fossil fuels. Green hydrogen is intended to respond to the great development of the automobile industry in the area and is understood as an alternative and complement to other sustainable energies. The colony features the ideal conditions for hydrogen generation since it is located close to a watercourse, it counts with existing hydraulic infrastructure that can be reused in great part, and optimized clean electricity generated from them.
In addition, we propose an integral retrofit of the envelope and the building’s cooling, heating, and ventilation systems based on the passive house concepts (high-performance windows; quality insulation; airtight construction; construction without thermal bridges; mechanical ventilation and heat recovery). Maintaining the architectural expression of the facades, we achieve more efficient and sustainable buildings that will last for future generations
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Heritable Colony aims to break with the segregation between industry and life that occurs in many colonies, by creating an integrated community connected to the landscape. 19th-century colonies used to be hermetic and harmful to the environment, polluting the surroundings and embracing a subordination model between production and workers' lives. We propose a new community that is open to its surroundings and values the deep heritage architecture of the place, with footprints of memory in each building, and that empowers the purpose and beauty of the colony. Considering the extension of the current built environment, we determine to not build new constructions since we can guarantee that the future needs of the colony will be met by the retrofit of the current buildings.
We consider of great importance the cultural value of the complex, and therefore Heritable Colony proposes an interior route composed of a series of public, social, and cultural buildings that are located along a central axis that traverses the colony from South to North. This axis generates a linear route, which provides access to the entire complex and connects to the pathway over the aqueduct. The regeneration of green spaces and agricultural production within the colony is enhanced along this route. In addition, courtyards are introduced within the denser buildings to promote ventilation and provide natural light, while respecting the architectural heritage.
Finally, a recovery of the riverbanks in the proximity of the colony is proposed, with the planting of native riverside vegetation and Phyto-purification of the water. A recreational area associated with the canal will allow interaction between the users of the colony and the river. As the colony is located in an enclave of natural interest, the connection to the natural environment is of great importance to the project, proposing an urbanistic approach that seeks to bring nature back into the Colony.
Key objectives for inclusion
The urban structure of the 19th Century colony segregates the production spaces from the residential spaces. Nowadays, this structure has created social segregation and a sentiment of abandonment. Heritable Colony seeks to re-engage the community into their own space, understanding the whole complex as one community space, where work and life are interconnected and become a hybrid city.
The main idea behind this proposal is to create a 21st-century colony model that reconnects the community with nature and the land, creating an energy-productive model that will support the growth of the community sustainably. The project is based on the exemplary conversion of the colony to the proposed ecological energy cluster, having the habitants of Heritable Colony as the principal agent in the process. We aim to create a self-sufficient community that is adapted to engage different activities and users, ranging from visitors to long-term habitants. The new cooperative model emerges from the innovation of the old industrial memories and becomes a sustainable economic model for the region, generating new job opportunities for people with diverse backgrounds.
Once the basis of the energy model has been implemented, the main activity of the colony will focus on the development of parallel social initiatives, and the new urban development based on the reuse of the existing heritage. These spaces will host a diversity of activities, ranging from housing, commercial spaces, flexible spaces to work, etc. Included in these activities will be the future visitor development that will exemplify the Colony as a reference model of preservation of heritage while generating a new productive model. New public space is designed to empower the economy, giving spaces for markets, fairs, and any other activity that promote access and proximity to the production and Colony. The proposal aims to become a system for and by the citizens, that will evolve, and create the city everyone envisions.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The success of Heritable Colony is directly related to the closed cycle formed by clean energy producers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and residents. The economic and social model proposed in Heritable Colony is based on a circular production cycle that preserves and fosters the heritage of the Colony and regenerates the surrounding landscape, engaging all of the agents of the community and making them the main developer of their system. The implementation of the production model takes into consideration the gradual growth of the community, where local agents intervene to coordinate the actions taken, with great focus on the recovery of the existing landscape. What used to be a focus of pollution, becomes a filter to regenerate the community and the environment, to create prosperity where nature comes back into the city and takes a fundamental role in the wellbeing of the residents.
Sustainability in the proposal is applied as a basic concept that englobes energy, built environment, production, and society. It is addressed in the creation of green energy, proposing a closed cycle of production where existing water supply and infrastructure are used to produce energy and create a new economy model. It is also applied in the refurbishment of existing construction, maintaining the maximum area of constructed buildings, while giving them a longer and more sustainable life and simultaneously we propose a natural cycle of development and growth, that addresses the recovery of the landscape in the first place. Ultimately, the cooperative vision of the Heritable Colony includes the inhabitants of the city in the decision-making process, creating a self-sufficient society and turning the evolution of the city into a sustainable model of growth based on the needs of the region. To activate this model and make it succeed, the stigma of the concept of an old Colony has to be broken down, and thanks to identifying spaces of opportunity a new model is created to attract new residents
