The spatial layout of the project, created by Arquitecturas Afectivas, is organized into accessible modules designed to spark questions and encourage active listening among diverse communities, institutions, and passersby.
Its physical structure reflects a strong ecological commitment, as it is built using walls made from sacks of seeds. At the end of its life cycle, the installation is completely dismantled, allowing the materials to return to the earth; the seeds are then free to scatter and germinate within the landscape, leaving behind a living trace—a material and affective metabolism—within the urban environment of Barcelona.
"The house of encounter with the other" by Arquitecturas Afectivas. Photograph by Adrià Goula.
Project description by Arquitecturas Afectivas
The project begins with a question: Can architecture facilitate encounters between bodies, cultures, and narratives in a world marked by fragmentation? In response to this challenge, the installation opens up an affective, sheltered space where new ways of relating to one another can be imagined.
The installation functions as a mechanism that brings together communities, encounters, and territories. This "house of encounter with the other" is an architectural structure composed of rooms built from questions. To inhabit this house, therefore, means allowing those questions to linger within each participant.
The project creates a space where people can engage with one another in an open and authentic manner. It introduces an architecture rooted in affect, sensitivity, and bodily experience. Through various performances, the house fosters new modes of interaction within the public sphere, activating processes of coexistence and listening among diverse communities. At the same time, it connects local stakeholders, institutions, and citizens in a shared gesture of encounter—and, at times, disjuncture.
Over the course of two weeks, artists, thinkers, and various communities brought the space to life, exploring new ways of inhabiting the act of meeting. La Ribot and Jone San Martín focused on perception and everything that occurs before words emerge; Payzee Mahmood initiated conversations about identity, belonging, and memory; while Diego E. Osorno drew attention to the physical, political, and emotional borders that permeate our daily lives.
In an era marked by emotional distance, this house offers an alternative: a space where the act of meeting becomes essential once again. After all, we are already familiar with the alternative to such encounters—and, even more so, with its consequences.
The house is eventually dismantled, and the walls—made of sacks of seeds—return to the earth. The seeds are scattered across the landscape, where they may take root and germinate. The project operates as an ephemeral, circular mechanism, leaving behind a living trace—an affective and material metabolism within the city of Barcelona.
