History and High-Rise in Harmony
July 13th, 2006
In a reversal of the rapacious development that has choked Spain’s coastline with concrete over the past few decades, Valencia has started building a neighbourhood based around ancient market gardens and irrigation systems. Bulldozers have moved into an area of rundown farms and scrap yards that is to become Sociopolis, a “revolutionary” locality that mixes the high rise and hi-tech with traditional agriculture. Sociopolis has taken its inspiration from the typical Valencian huerta, or market garden region, where small farms share irrigation systems to grow their fruit and vegetables. Irrigation channels dug by the Moorish inhabitants of the region more than 1,000 years ago are to be used to water Sociopolis and allow the residents to combine life in a tower block at up to 20 storeys, with allotment-style gardening. The project will provide about 2,800 “affordable” homes in a country where house prices have left many young people out of the market.
Plans for two of the buildings due to be erected over the next three years were selected for a recent exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, on the best of Spanish architecture. “We are proposing a new format for the 21st century”, said the architect Vicente Guallart, who is leading the project. “Twentieth century cities were built for the industrial age and for lives lived at machine speeds.” Water distribution, controlled by a 1,000-year-old body called the Tribunal of Water, will involve more than four miles of the old acequia channels, and fibre optic cables will provide internet services.
Sociopolis is a collaborative project between architects from several countries, including the architecture company Foreign Office Architects, which has an office in the UK.
In a country where allotments are a novelty outside traditional village communities, the 600 allotment plots are already oversubscribed by those planning to move into the neighbourhood.
“It is something that both the young and the old want to do,” said Guallart.
Privately funded, but providing cheap rental properties, Sociopolis is not considered an expensive project. With Spain’s traditional family structure changing, Sociopolis is also designed for the elderly and single people.
Politicians have taken much of the blame for the corruption and anarchy that has ruled new developments along the Mediterranean coastline. Guallart, however, says that one of the keys to Sociopolis, which started as a paper project for an architecture show, has been the support of city politicians and urban planners. The Valencia region’s head of housing and development, Rafael Blasco, said: “This is sustainable urban development combined with quality architecture.”
