When Sergi Carulla and Oscar Blasco won the competition to redesign the historic town center of Ódena, an hour outside of Barcelona, in 2010, the world was a very different place. But their vision of the future is well suited to 2020, with an emphasis on public spaces that foster the social equality this new decade seeks.
Now, nearly a decade later, the duo’s Barcelona-based architecture and landscape-design firm, SCOB, has completed the new Placa Major for its clients, the town hall of Ódena and the government of Catalonia. The site, located on the hillside of a Medieval castle, comprises 1.3 acres of land that was previously a heavily trafficked six-way intersection in the center of the mountainous Catalan village. In their proposal, Blasco and his team changed the program from one that favors vehicles to a “pedestrian-priority space” adjacent to the existing structures—including the town hall, a church, and neighboring single-family homes—that he hopes can serve as a 21st-century gathering point for the community of 3,500 people.
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