Oh what a week!

Hi All! It's been an interesting week at school and I just want to share one of my little adventures with you! Yesterday for my Public Space workshop we did a tour of the city visiting a bunch of spaces which have been kind of taken over by the public for various uses, like gardens, playgrounds, soccer fields etc etc. The most interesting probably was Can Masdeu... which is in the photos below (minus the bird graffiti- that's in a garden planted on a vacant lot in Raval - the city center). So! The casa...

You get on the train and go to almost the last stop on the line and you get out and start walking... as you're walking you can see from the edge of the road that back in the trees there is a really large building set among the hills and forest. As you get closer (like in the pictures) you begin to see more clearly. The building was some sort of child care facility from the early 20th century which was abandoned after someone died and donated the property to the hospital foundation. The newer looking building behind was built to be a lepracy hospital in the 70's but it never was successful so it has also been left vacant all these years. Well in early 2001 there was a meeting about climate change etc. held at this place and the various architects, urban planners, environmentalists etc decided after the tmeeting that this was a really great place. So they basically just took it over and converted it into a shared living place for 25 people and they started planting crops and gardens, also offering space to the neighbours in the communities around space to plant things if they wanted... now we are 10 years later and they offer public workshops, they live almost entirely off their own food and they basically just ahve this alternative lifestyle. I don't necessarily agree with it - because they are fighting a system but then they have just created a smaller version model of the same thing outthere for themselves which makes no sense to me. It seems like wasted energy that would be much better spent on trying to improve the world rather than just escaping from it. But this is just an opinion. Anyhow! Was a very interesting tour! A little gem in the city that I would have never known about!

More this weekend!

Love!

Ps- It's been raining and kinda crappy here for 2 weeks now.... I'm ready for the sun to come back!!!!