The New Urban Fabrik
Torrent Estadella Eco-Industrial Park

Book

If Barcelona is to become a self-sufficient city with productive neighborhoods, its urban industry will have a key role. The term New Urban Fabrik merges two words that have been at odds for too long: “fabrik”, understood as factory or productive space; and “fabric”, the urban tissue of the city. This merger is possible thanks to the appearance of a thriving new urban industry that is green, intensive in added value, creates qualitative jobs and is perfectly compatible with all the other uses of the city.

Torrent Estadella, a centrally located but decadent and disconnected industrial area, provides a unique opportunity for this New Urban Fabrik to prosper and to crucially contribute to the city’s economic and environmental resilience. 

The site is reconnected to the city through a system of Green Ramblas that ecologically manage rain water. These Green Ramblas recover the original meaning of rambla as “riera”, the typical intermittent streams along the Mediterranean coast which are fundamental water cycle and climate regulators and that formed the primeval urban order of Barcelona. The site will transform into an innovative Eco-Industrial Park, incorporating a wide array of sustainability and industrial symbiosis strategies, unfolding a truly Green Infrastructure, developing a clear governance model and actively promoting its businesses. The industrial fabric can also become more compact and urban to better blend with the compact and, therefore, sustainable, urban tissue of Barcelona.

Today, a New Urban Fabrik can come to life by turning the green industry into a city builder at the heart of our cities.

Editor and publisher
© Eduard Balcells Architecture+Urbanism+Landscape. Eduard Balcells Montané, Architect

ISBN
ISBN 978-84-606-8052-9

Year
2015

Project
Torrent Estadella Eco-Industrial Park