1// BARCELONA. HISTORICAL CITY. MONUMENTAL CITY
Barcelona, a historical city founded more than 4000 years ago, has been related to the sea since its beginnings. This circumstance has given it a monumental character that has made it a unique city in Europe. Its growth, at the expense of the transformation of the maritime front, has been a constant in its development. The coast has been destined to different activities: the creation and expansion of the port area, the industrial activities that have not taken into account the sea at specific moments, as well as cultural and leisure activities, that have nowadays opened the city of Barcelona to the sea.

2// FUTURE FLOOD. CONTROL SYSTEMS
However, a problem arises when looking at the future. The most favourable scene foresees an increase at the sea level from 3 to 5 metres for the year 2100. Global warming has increased, the extension of ice in the Arctic has reached its minimums since counting on satellite data. Climate change is a reality. Marine currents are being analysed, the action of the wind, the tides’ characteristics and the bathymetry. A simulation on the increase of the sea’s level is developed, and the consequences of the penetration of the water into the city. Traditional and contemporary mechanisms on the control and movement of the water are studied, looking for a solution to this problem, and transforming it into a virtue.

3// PROTECTOR OF THE CITY. NEW BARCELONA
Therefore, NEW BARCELONA presents itself as an alternative. An alternative to the current city, a new border, a new limit, a new relation with the horizon. An intervention at a territorial scale of 20km of length that is, at the same time, located at 2km from the coast of the city of Barcelona. A new space that protects, complements, relates and allows the growth of a city oppressed by the mountains. An ambitious plan, self-sufficient, that expands the coast, creates new activities and energy, and that, even the horizon still exists, gives a new coastal space in front of the city, an enclosed sea.

In order to establish the new territorial plan, the NEW BARCELONA prototype is developed, that will be repeated along the coast. A fragment that will be carried out to allow the evolution, a surviving mechanism that responds to the problems of the future by giving an answer from the present time. NEW BARCELONA is opportunity, a monumental intervention that does not hide, with a colossal scale.