- CONFÉRENCE / The path to RESSÒ. A solar decathlon story.
27.03.18h-20h. Amphi. ENSAL
In 2006 in the School of Architecture of Vallès –ETSAV– at the UPC-BarcelonaTECH started this still on-going long-term project which consists on rethinking education with the ultimate goal to stop teaching and to start learning. Learning by doing. Doing by our own hands. At the very beginning, it was 2 professors with lots of students working afterhours to build a greenhouse-laboratory. What started as an anarchic prototype soon became a serious project: The Catalan government ordered two prototypes, and then came the three prototypes for the Solar Decathlon Europe competitions: LOW3 (2010), (e)CO (2012), RESSÒ (2014). Furthermore, numerous of design studios in the School faced several social challenges of our region with the aim to explore real, social, useful, necessary, affordable and self-constructed architecture at the core of all projects. The last project within this story is the new prototype TO for the current Solar Decathlon competition.
Within this series, Ressò has been one of the most successful projects –if not he most succesful. It began with 50 students who decided to design and built a prototype without any academic leadership. Students, for the good and for the bad, should make all the decisions by themselves, what became an extremely slow and un-efficient organisation of production. However, it became an extraordinary successful experience in terms of learning. Thus, eventually it worked really well. Ressò was awarded the 1st price in Architecture, the 1st price in Innovation, and the 3rd price in urbanism in the SD2014. Furthermore, as it was planned originally before the competition, the prototype was re-build in 2016 to be used by the community of neighbours in Sant Muç, in Rubí, near Barcelona, in an still living experimental project about urban refurbishment.
- Marti Obiols Gali