Abstract:

How can we recover the identity of the city?... how can we do so that our heritage is not lost? ... how could the city be that place of meeting and exchange again?... how to return to make the city our place?... these are the issues that lead us to create the project of "The City of Tomorrow".

It is an educational and awareness-raising project, whose goal is that from childhood and through play you become aware of all the scales of the common: tangible and intangible heritage, architecture, urbanism and landscape. At the same time that from the architectural discipline becomes aware of a new vision of the city.

This project is being developed through different workshops in the City Councils of Galicia, it is carried out by the PØSTarquitectos team, financed from the different councils, and receives the support of the ETSAC (Higher Technical School of Architecture, University of A Coruña), COAG (Official College of Architects of Galicia), and APATRIGAL (Association for Defense of the Galician Cultural Heritage).
"The City of Tomorrow" is an innovative project, not only because of the issues it deals with, nor because of who it is addressed to, but because of the way it is carried out.

In the first place, it is aimed at children, as future citizens of "The City of Tomorrow", generally forgotten in the processes of transformation of cities. It is childhood that will be in charge of taking care of our material and immaterial heritage and of transmitting it. If the future inhabitants do not know the environment they inhabit, tomorrow will repeat the mistakes that have occurred with previous generations, pieces of heritage of incalculable value will be destroyed, or the identity of our towns/cities will be forgotten.

The workshops have been carried out with groups of approximately 150 children, aged between 3 and 15 years old, who for 5 days the town/city they inhabit becomes their game board, in their laboratory of experimentation. 5 days in which spaces of patrimonial, architectural or landscape interest are studied, they are recovered, they are lived and what is more fundamental, they are enjoyed, generating with it a feeling of identity. The city in which they live has changed for these children, it is their city, they are their spaces.

The fundamental tool to reach childhood is the game, so the activities are based on it. The children play, have fun, and discover elements of their town/city unknown until now. Learn playing.

In "The City of Tomorrow" students from the ETSAC (Technical School of Architecture of A Coruña) participate, looking for ways to outline the concepts of heritage, architecture, urbanism and landscape to transmit them to children; at the same time that they themselves learn from the little ones, they break with the regulated education forgetting the figures, the norms and the urbanistic techniques, and they learn to focus on the needs of the citizens of tomorrow. Learn by teaching.

Keywords:

Teaching innovation, architecture, town planning, landscape, childhood.