Learning The Ropes” – Barcelona Sailing Academy | Barcelona, Spain | Unit 21 | 2024
karina.lacaru.22@ucl.ac.uk

The project investigates the permanent courtship between sea and land, situating Barcelona’s Port Vell on the coastline of the built-up landscape. The Old Port represented the primary protector against storms, waves, and general inclement weather conditions. My chosen site, ‘Parc de Gossos’, a Dog Park – is currently a green space that functions as a sight-seeing destination for tourists and has leisure potential for the local community. The conceptual route of the project was formed alongside the analysis of water patterns that are influenced by various wind intensities, directly referencing Beaufort and Douglas scales, which introduce the idea of user-tailored weather sensorial experiences. Continuing my previous design methodology of light tracking of hand movements and spatial action notations, the proposal starts with the visualisation of the sea landscape. The two surrounding topographical conditions of the site (sea – water and city – land) led to the research question: how could a building situated on stable land and surrounded by restful waters deliver similar conditions and experiences to the ones that are unpredictable, from the midst of the open sea?

Traces of Food – Context, Procedures and Consequences
This experiment attempts to “decode the genome of cooking” by forensically documenting it through photographs. This explores the feedback process of a meal, the reverberations and shadows of the whole activity.

A Tactile Dinner Party – Formula by Futurist Aeropainter Fiillia
The film translates concepts of sensorial synesthesia into a perception of cross-modality. While combining senses in unusual ways, food and its tactility become the raw material for art – a disguised artistic medium of Avant-garde experimentation.

Naval Circulation Drawing
Each of the six chosen sailing coordinates set out the drawn area for inert components (design and structure of boat elements) and fluid happenings (conventional maritime techniques or human conduct – actions performed by sailors).

Final Plan Drawings
The plan drawings delineate the 4 fragments of my proposal: aquatic therapy basement, sailing simulators, main boat-building workshop and teaching spaces. The canopy and roof structure configurate the composition of various building envelopes.

Final Film – “Learning the Ropes”
The building would bring the users closer to natural weather elements primarily by engaging with their visual senses and general perception of their surroundings.