La alegalidad como estrategia de activismo : historia de la casa autoconstruida en Barcelona

Abstract

Santiago Cirugeda (Seville, 1971) hacks legal restraints on urban planning to create "a-legal" interventions within the public domain. This "a-legality" is the looking glass through which we will reconsider social housing projects in Barcelona. There are three main objectives in this. The first, being to determine the contexts, principles and results of a-legal forms of activism. The second, being to revise the history of social housing in Barcelona from the perspective of a-legal activism. To reconsider historical precedents for innovative social housing design such as; the "Caseta Desmuntable" (Barcelona, 1931) by Josep Lluís Sert or the "Instant City" (Eivissa. 1971) created for the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. Finally the am is to speculate about the projection that these a-legal strategies can have over time in the public domain, taking as an example Cirugeda's "Urban Prescriptions" (1997). Cirugeda's instructions for self-builds in the public space were available to anybody simply by downloading them from the Internet. Several designers, such as Area Estudio in Guadalajara (México, 2009) or Oliver Bishop in London (UK, 2008) have downloaded and used these "Urban Prescriptions". It is an example that enables a reconsideration of historical precedents and an exploration of the role that a-legal activism can have in subverting urban planning for social change.