“No Beach Here” is a week-long workshop bringing together undergraduate students from ETSAV-UPC (Vallès School of Architecture – Polytechnic University of Catalonia) which, taking the Fòrum Baths as its starting point, aims to analyse the specific nature of seafronts and test new ways of appropriately facing and adapting to social and environmental challenges.

The beach is a space of mediation between land and sea, between the urban and the natural, between the fixed and the changing. In recent years, it has become one of the places that has most seriously been affected by climate change. Increasing erosion will lead to the disappearance of large areas of dry beach along the coast before the end of the century. This situation is an opportunity for reflection at a time of personal and global responsibility, when action and imagination nourished by creativity rooted in ecology and empathy, and modelled as strategic scenarios and tactical designs, have become necessary.

When a beach disappears and becomes a line, how can we ensure that this line will condense all the properties of place that large stretches of beach have had throughout history, properties that have made possible a whole series of activities inherent to this space of land-sea exchanges?

In Barcelona, there is a place that anticipates this development: the Fòrum Baths. This is a space that will allow us to reflect on its functioning and to test new forms of adaptation and physical preparation of the space to give an appropriate response to social and environmental demands and challenges.

This is a joint initiative of the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) and the Department of Architectural projects at ETSAV-UPC. The week-long workshop will bring together students from this school to work on its proposed theoretical and practical exercise. Together with the organisers, ETSAV lecturers Xavier Matilla and Rosa Rull, the workshop offers the contributions of the landscape architect Miriam Garcia, who will also guide the students in their research during the week the workshop is held.

The inaugural session of the workshop on Monday 9 September at 10 a.m. in the CCCB will begin with the lecture “100 Beaches” by the architect Iñaki Abalos. This will be followed by presentations of the five finalist projects in the Seafronts category of the 2024 European Prize for Urban Public Space. The closing ceremony will take place on Friday 13 September at 6 p.m. with a show of the students’ proposals.

This activity is exclusively offered to ETSAV students.