Infrastruttura come oggetto urbano: la Rambla de Sants a Barcellona

In 2002 the Barcelona municipality decided to launch the urban renewal project of the Sants infrastructural corridor. In the course of the last century in fact, railways cutting the urban fabric had been dividing the neighborhood in two distinct parts, a condition which remained unchanged until 2016. The project aims at reconnecting the two sides of the district. Nevertheless, unlike other similar projects in New York and Paris, the Rambla de Sants does not replace the railway, but incorporate the corridor establishing an innovative urban system. To do that, Sergi Godia and Ana Molino flanked the infrastructure with two Warren beams, with a roof garden on top of them, using glaze to furnish the geometry of the elevations. In this way, trains can be observed but not heard from the streets. The artifact results in a complex public space where the different elements define a new and unexpected type of urban landscape.