Live stream presentation Archiprix International workshop: Towards a middle-out urbanism

Madrid can be considered as an urbanscale mirror to the social, economical, political and cultural landscape determined by the global financial crisis during the beginning of the XXI century in western societies.The bursting of real estate bubble has left a local municipality in bankrupt, hitherto unseen high inequity and unemployment rates and paradoxes such as ghost neighborhoods and daily evictions or brand new infrastructures without users and empty lots in a city centre with a lack of equipments.

This uncertain scenario has allowed numerous citizen initiatives to arise and put into practice alternatives to the way the city have been thought, built and lived. In this context, we could state that although Madrid has no topdown strategic project as a city, their citizens are already building bottomup partial alternatives, but is it there a third way? Is it possible to put into practice a multidirectional approach to city making in which strategies and tactics can coexist and relate? Can the architect play an intermediate role in this city
making process? In Archiprix International 2015 Workshop these questions were raised through diverse and specific design tasks. Design teams led by emerging local practices focus on real cases and hope to arouse awareness and sometimes even discussion.

In ten different workshops more than a hundred brilliant young architects, urban designers and landscape architects from all over the world studied for nine days some of the challenges Madrid is facing. They worked days and nights on their sunjects. Today Thursday 7 May they will present the results. For all of you who can’t be here at the ETSAM in Madrid, the great Íñigo Cornago set up a live stream. Come and join us online!

The presentation starts at 16.00-ish Spanish time. (GMT+2)
http://audiovisuales.upm.es/directo/