Draw floors

Barcelona and Madrid are such dense cities due to the fact that this way the costs of building squares and streets were more economical for the owners, who could compensate them by selling many more apartment units. It was urban planning conceived with industrial logic: drawing a floor plan and repeating it many times, building a lot to achieve economies of scale.

Zoning was invented to separate the smoke from chimneys from houses. In England, all the eastern areas of cities are industrial, so as not to fill the western neighborhoods, which are the most affluent and where the best houses are found, with smoke. All Catalan cities also have industrial areas separated from the extensions and residential neighborhoods. In Barcelona, Poblenou follows the same grid as the Eixample, but until twenty years ago it was a large segregated industrial estate, because not even Avenida Diagonal crossed it.

The forms of work have been evolving for decades and, in contrast, the plans continue to insist on separating economic activity from neighborhoods. But since laptops were invented and remote work from anywhere has expanded thanks to the cloud, economic activity has spread throughout the city. Any corner, even a park bench or a hotel lobby, can be productive. And the way of designing and building the city has also changed. Digital disruption and the circulation of ideas and projects on the Internet have accelerated the import of projects from one city to another.

For my generation, raised at the end of the analog era, the Internet is still an invention difficult to process. We are users, but uncritical, because we are still fascinated by this technology that travels through waves, with images and sounds that are available at all times. The same thing happens to architects. We had barely mastered the pencil and charcoal when Autocad became universal, and after years of copying drawings in rotring on tracing paper, now we smile when we discover that with a single button you can make copies of dozens of windows along the entire facade. Instead of repeating the drawing of the window, which led to all kinds of occurrences and variations to avoid boredom or idleness, we have learned to copy and paste it with a single command. There are people creating parallel worlds in the Metaverse, and we continue to copy rows of windows, one on top of another.

Digital tools have already changed the 21st-century city. Now, many buildings have facades that are like chocolate bars. In old facades, the main floors had larger windows or majestic tribunes and balconies. And those on the top floors were also slightly different. It was entertaining to look for that variation in the facades. Drawing with pencils, the street always had filigrees on the cornices and on the main floors.

But since facades are designed by pasting digital blocks on the computer, there are no longer details on the main floors, because they are exactly the same as the other floors. This is a deception of perception, because while it is true that from the computer screen the architect can zoom in and out of the facade with the mouse's zoom, when we walk down the street, we see the ground floor and the first floor very differently from the upper floors. The corbels that support the balconies of the Eixample floors are beautiful figurative sculptures that embellish the streets. But you have to walk to notice these things, and I fear that the imperatives of "productivity" penalize these filigrees, which cannot be monetized. The profession is not there to give away hours, and in the ordinances no one forces to think generously about how the ground floors should be. The streets of the peripheries that are built now are much less interesting than in the 20th-century city, because most of the buildings are designed by rhythmically moving the right button of the computer mouse up and down.

Drawing with pencils, the street always had filigrees on the cornices and on the main floors. But since facades are designed by pasting digital blocks on the computer, there are no longer details on the main floors, because they are exactly the same as the other floors

Of all of them, Google Maps is the most alien invention. I unlock my phone, open the application with the satellite view, and a flashing blue circle indicates, on an infinite photograph, where I am at all times. Objectively, the technological invention is so powerful that it seems I have everything within reach. A Swiss architect is commissioned a project on the Costa Brava and by browsing Google Maps one afternoon he can make it seem like he knows how to get there, he can create images of rows of chalets and he can make it seem like he will replant the trees. But this does not mean that he knows anything important about the place. The result is a repetition of banal chalets repeated along the street that have eaten up the forest in Sa Riera(as SOS Costa Brava denounces), who don't even care about views, slopes, or public space. Compare this action with the ambition used in places like S'Agaró, delicately drawn by the architectnoucentista Rafel Masó. A hundred years have passed since those drawings, and the promotional images for Begur show that instead of progressing, we have gone backward in the art of building!

Drawing is powerful. Drawings deceive more than writing. To represent is to lead the viewer through a narrative that cannot be counter-argued if the opponent does not have the same graphic capabilities. Mastering graphic narrative is mastering urban discussions, because plans and drawings are the only truth until another appears. When I was studying, I had a friend who took impeccable notes. She always used thick white sheets and fine-point black Pilots. She solved physics and math problems with very understandable graphics, and her notes were much clearer than the explanations of the professors or the books. I noticed the work that went into these notes and, throughout my professional career, I have corroborated that people who can explain themselves graphically on paper are more convincing.

The promotional images for Begur show that instead of progressing, we have gone backward in the art of building!

Communicating with drawings is essential, but it makes discussions very asymmetrical, because those who master the craft of the pencil, or the computer, always win. And, of course, entities, volunteers, neighbors, or spontaneous individuals who attend citizen participation sessions do not usually handle a pencil with skill, and cannot contrast what the technical teams are capable of illustrating. That is why publications like this dare to tackle urban discipline. Because to project the city, it is also necessary to communicate.