More than a Collage

Abstract

Mallorca is a landscape of contrasts, desires, and contradictions. This island harbors a hybrid architectural ecosystem, nourished by constant external inputs and internal dynamics rooted in the optimization of local resources. This makes it an exemplary setting for a tense contemporary context, where architecture and its teaching must rise to the challenge of responding to contingencies and extremes in constant dialectic.

This contribution to the congress presents a reflection on how to carry out a critical and propositional architectural synthesis in a context of contemporary controversies. Through the first edition of the intensive undergraduate elective at ETSAB-UPC entitled Mallorca Collage, this paper focuses on the teaching methodology applied, the key historical references behind its planning, and the pedagogical potential revealed through the resulting material. In this course, the Balearic island is used as a multifaceted field for student exploration and learning. Over one week, students work collectively – visiting, researching, and drawing fragments of the island’s architecture – to construct a precise and intentional architectural collage.

The objective is to generate reflection through the development of a utopian, graphic and critical proposal of the present reality, as well as a speculative path toward alternative realities. Aquaecopark, Villa Camper, Lujo Bunker, Hotel Colmena, Más que Marès... are some of the course topics that act as catalysts and narrative threads for research into contemporary island issues such as water management, rural environments, tourism saturation, luxury housing, or construction resources. All the information gathered becomes a shared database. Aware of their realism, surrealism, and romanticism, each student’s proposal is a hybrid space shaped by collaboration, encounters, and explored places: a fragment of a Mallorca of Mallorcas, an architecture of architectures.

From Italian Caprici, Alejandro de la Sota in Esquivel, Learning from Las Vegas, Made in Tokyo, the art of Akira Yamaguchi or the literature of Agustín Fernández Mallo, the course builds on a landscape of key references to revisit, from a contemporary lens, a synthetic, critical, and propositional view of architecture and its context through experimental means.