ARCH_500-600 Options Studio: ‘Coworking and Living in the City: Seville’s Historic Center in the 21st Century’

Throughout modern and contemporary history, the evolution of society, culture, and economy has had a tremendous impact on the quality of workspaces. Important changes have taken place in the physical workplace, from the Fordian tradition (human assembly line in Ford factories) and Taylorist processes (division of tasks according to their different functions) of the past to the collaborative and multidisciplinary modes of production and workstyles seen nowadays. At the same time, the close relationship between an architectural space and the workplace it is capable of generating must be highlighted, because it strongly contributes to the humanization of these spaces. 

In European cities, the phenomenon of gentrification is causing an exodus of the local population from historic centers to the outskirts and suburbs. As a result, historical centers are becoming more and more like museums. But spaces are still available in these dense urban areas, providing an opportunity for tertiary sector use that can respond to the needs of contemporary society, allowing a new focus of economic activation and production to be established in the heart of these historical centers, creating spaces for citizens to live their daily lives, thus contributing to the humanization of the city. 

In this studio, students reflected on the relationship between architectural space and collective workplaces, as well as that between society and urban space. Architectural projects were developed to integrate a hybrid program consisting of multiple coworking spaces (rental spaces for companies and other emerging projects), spaces for individual initiatives geared toward public use (exhibition areas and restaurants), and dwellings for short- and long-term workers. The final objective was to enhance the humanization of the city via the space created for relationship in workplaces and living spaces. 

The site was an empty interior area in the historic center of Seville, Spain, consisting of two city blocks with only two openings onto the street. Students were challenged to create an interior street traversing the project, facilitating the integration of and interaction between coworking spaces and living spaces within the urban environment. 

The first weeks of the semester focused on addressing various thematic lines related to the project, such as places of relationship and their interaction with the urban space itself. These included influences between workspaces and new technologies; compatibility and negotiation strategies between hybrid programs; materiality and construction of the architectural space; support, flexibility, and tectonics; and representation, interpretation, and the communicative intention of the architectural project. For background, important precedents of modern and contemporary architecture were revisited and analyzed. 

For the remainder of the semester, each student developed an architectural project in one of the two proposed sites based on their analysis and understanding of the context. A collective model of the sites and their immediate surroundings was made, in which models of the different proposals were inserted. A trip to the south of Spain (Seville, Cordoba, and Granada) offered students an opportunity to experience Spain’s culture, context, urban forms, and historical and contemporary architecture, where they were able to verify their proposed project on site.