Architects in Valencia make proposals for the vacant lots in their city.

Thursday, 12 May 2011 06:33

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lego_01 MGR is a young architectural studio based in Valencia, Spain. They took the initiative of surveying the vacant lots in the city's downtown area and then superimposed Lego models to fill the voids, all in the purpose of raising public awareness about this issue.

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Edited by Lynda Waggoner

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Here is the explanation of their work through their own words.

Habit make us blind

Day by day we pass by vacant lots downtown. Just like an invisible metastasis generated in the heart of the city and extending to all its arteries. Neighborhoods that, although having a huge potential, have more and more unused spaces, a fact that does not at all promote a correct sustainable development. Years have made us immune to this problem. It is a landscape we already recognize as typical of the central neighborhoods in Valencia.

Sometimes, the tourists are the ones who open our eyes by mentioning or questioning whether this situation is normal. On other occasions, we pay attention to it for a moment only because the secondary problems that those spaces imply affect us directly. But in most of the cases, they are only a part of our way. Like a gruyere cheese where the rats block any possibilities of reconstruction, while staring at us, far away from its holes.

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This photographic work aims at calling people's attention, just like painting those isolated walls yellow would. It demands the recreational use of those vacant lots through the eyes of a child, by filling them with impossible constructions, surrealistic installations in line with the problem. A children game as a neighbourhood shout, demanding the right to take part in their city.

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About us:
Mgr is an architecture studio founded in 2008 by architects Manuel Lopez Garrote and Bernat Ivars Vinaroz. Our artistic concerns expand beyond the architecture. We are covering every branch of design and seizing every opportunity and use the new orders as a source of learning and experimentation. The world of 3D and computer graphics offered us new opportunities, where imagination takes precedence over the economy and where any construction could be possible. A creative laboratory in motion.