Architecture practice VORA joins the initiative to renovate the neighbourhood with its proposal for transformation through small actions. This will be based on three vectors:
- Permeability: creating greater visibility in the routes to give more transparency.
- Qualification of the space: create and differentiate spaces through new paving and different furniture with their own identity.
- Uses: incorporate the foundations and infrastructures to subsequently create spaces with new uses and reactivate less frequented areas.
The intervention will be responsible for renovating and cleaning up the Rambla del Raval area to create a more attractive and profitable future for the neighbours, which will make this a more interesting and attractive space, with its wide avenues that provide visibility and useful furniture for the meeting areas, as well as being able to reactivate the area socially with future infrastructures that allow coexistence.
Rambla del Raval and surrounding area by VORA. Photography by Adrià Goula.
Description of project by VORA
The renovation area includes the public spaces of the Rambla del Raval, Plaça Vázquez Montalbán and Plaça Salvador Seguí, as well as the areas and streets that are connected to them.
The area has undergone a very significant urban transformation since the approval of the PERI Raval (regeneration plan) in 1985. This process has meant the replacement of a very compact and socially degraded part of the city by another one that, even with the unquestionable improvements it has undergone, still had significant dysfunctions.
An open transformation strategy has been put in place, through small interventions that allow a balanced appropriation by the neighbors.
A powerful transformation in spirit but light in form, without extensive infrastructural works, demolitions, etc.
This strategy is focused on improving 3 qualities of the space:
Permeability: To reinforce the current routes, making them more visible. Undoing the linearity of the Rambla del Raval, permeabilizing its transversality, strengthening the transition between spaces in the transversal routes, mainly Salvador Seguí - Vázquez Montalbán - Rambla - Folch i Torres axis.
Comfort: To make using and enjoying more convenient and comfortable. Removing physical barriers, laying soft pavements, adding shade, modifying furniture to generate living and meeting spaces, providing Vázquez Montalbán square with identity and comfort.
Utilization: To provide infrastructures and lay the foundations to motivate new activities in the public space. Rebalancing, avoiding segregation, activating unused spaces, fulfilling unmet needs (children, youth and adults), rearranging the terraces to optimize their occupancy in the public space, less intrusive, and more inviting.
![Friedrich Kiesler, Endless House for Mary Sisler [shattered sketch sheet], New York and Florida, 1961, 21.5 x 33.4 cm, pencil on paper, mounted on cardboard. Courtesy by the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna](/sites/default/files/styles/mopis_home_news_category_slider_desktop/public/2025-05/metalocus_Fundacio%CC%81n-Frederick-Kiesler_03_p.webp?h=3b4e7bc7&itok=kogQISVW "Friedrich Kiesler, Endless House for Mary Sisler [shattered sketch sheet], New York and Florida, 1961, 21.5 x 33.4 cm, pencil on paper, mounted on cardboard. Courtesy by the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna")
