ARCA Portable Garden

ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia

ARCA Portable Garden 

Takk + Mireia Luzárraga + Alejandro Muiño

ARCHITECTS
Takk

LANDSCAPE COLLABORATOR
Lea Atelier

COLLABORATORS
Roger Monfort, Berta Ribaudí, Marcos Romero

CLIENT
Model, Barcelona Architectures Festival

CURATOR
Eva Franch I Gilabert, José Luís De Vicente, Beth Galí

PHOTOGRAPHS
José Hevia

YEAR
2022

LOCATION
Barcelona, Spain

CATEGORY
Small Scale

The planet's biodiversity is reduced year after year in such a way that up to a million species could disappear in the coming decades.

Cities are the focus of this process mainly due to the concentration of CO2 emissions, the heat island effect, and the limited area of green areas, whose species are often selected with merely aesthetic or functional criteria, causing a homogenization of urban species and greater insecurity about ecosystems.

ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia

The proposal reflects on possible models of public space capable of helping to reverse this situation.

A mobile device in the form of a reservoir is home to a multitude of trees, plants, shrubs, and insects capable of mitigating the effects of global warming or stimulating biodiversity.

In this way, species capable of absorbing ten times more CO2 than usual, edible wild species that open up new possibilities in our food sovereignty, or species that are capable of summoning other agents through the establishment of relationships of mutualism, tenantism, or symbiosis will be some of the guests who will meet at the installation.

ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia

During the festival, this artifact will move through the streets of Barcelona acting as a pilot project of what could happen:

portable gardens that move to the areas of greatest concentration of pollution, new green spaces that are temporarily placed in highly densified areas, or open classrooms for interspecies botanical knowledge.

The project is built from the temporary, material, and political possibilities of the present but to imagine future scenarios that are as necessary as they are desirable.

ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia


ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia
ARCA Portable Garden
© José Hevia


ARCA Portable Garden
Axonometric
ARCA Portable Garden
Axonometric - political context