| As part of the iD Barri BDN Import/Export project run by iDensitat, we were asked to work on aspects of the local context of the Gorg neighbourhood in Badalona. The workshop was run jointly by Straddle3 and Todo por la Praxis, with the collaboration of Escola dArt i Superior de Disseny Pau Gragallo.
In the Gorg neighbourhood, there is a very large, empty site right on the main avenue or Rambla. This space is part of an urban development that was brought to a standstill when the financial crisis hit. It was zoned for new housing and facilities to service the neighbourhood. but the site has been paralysed for over ten years. The workshop set out to reflect around the possibility of generating facilities and uses for this site on a temporary basis, during the dead time until construction starts up again.
As it was impossible to organise agreements for temporary use of the site in such a short time, we decided to develop strategies for generating portable, mobile facilities that could catalyse future demands from local resident groups and give them visibility in the public space. To achieve this, we decided to create temporary facilities with nomadic, mobile infrastructure that can be used in citizen mobilisations, activities or protests in public space. These types of facilities can support activist mobilisations, but they can also become the engine for the festive, social situations that spring up around them.
These aims took shape in the form of a multifunctional gadget made up of two pieces. On one hand, there were two bicycles joined in parallel, which acted as a tractor element: it endowed the overall piece with mobility, and it also became the iconic aspect. The other element is the trailer, which was created out of two temporary construction fences and functioned as the 'container of content'. The overall device was designed for three initial uses: to hold a portable library for book swapping, a mobile kitchen to support neighbourhood fiestas and events, and an infopoint that informs residents on the urban processes taking place in the neighbourhood. In line with our usual procedure, the device was made by recovering and recycling materials. In this case we used metal profiles, construction fences, bicycles and drawing boards.
The name and logo of the device is a reference to urban zoning codes. Code 7 is the code that corresponds to the use of urban facilities, which is why we decided to call this portable facility CODI 7.
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