Enjoy the city

Enjoy the city talks about the need for freedom in cities and the search for powerful symbols of reuse. Of a less regulated city

Through 8 videos in Video Stories format, we show different symbolic locations of the city of Valencia, with bold and funny uses out of the box. Abandoned and degraded places, wasteful spaces or small corners with their own identity, are used as a canvas to rethink the city.

We talk about the meeting point between the function for which any object or building has been designed and the use that is usually given to it in a casual way. The breeding ground for creativity and life emerges on its own, all it needs is to be unimpeded. Improvisation and resignification of spaces are magnetic. 

Stairs are for going up and going down. They are for sitting. They are to grind. They are for eating sunflower seeds. They are for performances. 

A square is a space to be an adult, to be old and to be a child. For everyone to investigate within their possibilities.

When we think about the possible solutions that we can give to solve the challenges that will come, there are always two scales of action, the governmental or led by great powers and the initiatives created by groups of people who carry out interesting projects capable of raising awareness among the rest of the population. 

Enjoy the City addresses a series of reflections on this type of smaller-scale initiatives. Initiatives that, because of their will to generate a change, in many occasions, have to be daring, to approach the edges of legality and therefore have to constantly dialogue with urban planning rules and regulations in general that, far from being a tool for the citizenship, end up becoming mechanisms created by the public administrative apparatuses to protect themselves.

Throwing away and rebuilding is a practice that has been gradually disappearing due in part to the 2008 crisis. 

Currently, the awareness of limited resources and the added values that time gives to the constructions of another era has led to a special sensitivity towards the past.  Towards reuse. However, there are still few references in this regard. Few strong symbols of recycling. The focus is still more on mandatory heritage reasons or economic motives than on a logic based on sustainability. 

In any case, current constructions are still not very flexible. Models poorly adapted to a changing society and with the ability to adapt to an uncertain future.  There has been a lot of talk lately about resilient architecture, just like bioclimatic architecture, but buildings are not really designed or built to have a changing and adaptable attitude. 

This project is born from the belief that changes appear thanks to the symbols and the progressive awareness of the population. Enjoy the City does not pretend to be more than a small step towards another way of building a city both literally and metaphorically.