•Notícia

The Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), via the UPC Chair of Accessibility and the School of Architecture of the Vallès (ETSAV), promotes and coordinates the intensive Erasmus programme Let's Open Cities for Us (LOCUS)—a set of intensive workshops in which architecture students and teaching staff from European universities take part. These workshops have taken place for 3 consecutive years in different European cities and, in them, participants analyse the accessibility of the streets and propose solutions to accessibility problems for people in buildings and cities.

This initiative, coordinated by the lecturers of the UPC Department of History and Theory of Architecture, Marta Bordas and Miguel Usandizaga, aims to raise the awareness of students of architecture, urban development and landscape architecture of the need to consider accessibility as an essential aspect of any project. It also aims to disseminate the idea of "universal design" or "design for all", in order to design an environment suitable for everyone.

Accessibility in the streets of Tarragona was studied in February and the second city to be studied was Girona, a medium-sized city with an historical centre with a valuable heritage. The city is in a complicated topographic location and its recent evolution has led to a significant increase in the number of visitors and to considerable transformation of some areas in order to adapt them to their new uses (tourism, leisure, university campuses). All these factors make Girona a city with accessibility problems that are difficult to solve. From 12 to 26 July, the students taking part in the project will study all the aspects related to urban design, such as routes, street surfaces and flooring, street furniture and parking areas. With this information, the team will draw up design proposals for the public spaces that provide access to the city's historic monuments in ways that solve the accessibility problems detected.

The inauguration of the seminar took place on Monday, 14 July, at 10:30 in the Sala de Graus in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Girona and was attended by the programme coordinators; the UPC lecturers, Miguel Usandizaga and Marta Bordas; the director of the UPC Chair of Accessibility, Daniel Guasch;; the deputy mayor of Girona and councillor for Mobility, Territorial Coordination and Safety, Isabel Salamaña; the coordinator of studies of the Technical University of Girona (UdG), Josep Fuses, and the director of the ETSAV, Joan Puigdomènech.

In order to analyse accessibility in Girona, the participants visited the streets of the city centre on Monday, 14 July. The participants took a route through the historic centre of the city, with wheelchairs, sticks and eye masks so that they could obtain a first-hand experience of the city's accessibility problems. The group was accompanied by experts in rehabilitation from the Spanish national organization for the blind (ONCE) and by specialists in accessibility.

After analysing the city, the students and lecturers will spend two weeks designing proposals. The workshop will involve the cooperation of experts in accessibility and universal design, such as the chairman of the Design for All Foundation and expert in accessibility, Francesc Aragall, and the lecturer in Urban Development and Regional Planning of the University of Girona, Nadia Fava.

The new edition of LOCUS in Girona will end with the public presentation of the projects on Thursday, 24 July in the Sala de Graus at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Girona. A panel of experts in this field will judge the projects and award prizes for the best proposals.

The universities taking part in this edition of LOCUS are UPC, the University of Girona, through the School of Architecture; the University of Montpellier, France, through the National School of Architecture of Montpellier; the Politechnika Krakowska, Poland, through the Wydzial Architektury; the Fachhochschule Oldenburg/Ostfriesland/Wilhelmshaven, Germany, through the Fakultät für Architektur; and the Universitá Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Italy, through the Facoltà di Architettura.

The workshop, which has 36 students and 5 lecturers, will encourage group discussion, cooperative learning and project-based learning—objectives of the European Space for Higher Education.

LOCUS is supported by the Jesús Serra Foundation (Catalana Occidente Group), the Royal Board on Disability and the European Union, through the Erasmus programme. Other contributors are Girona City Council, the Technical School of the University of Girona, the official association of architects of Catalonia (COAC-Girona) and ONCE Girona.