Mapping the wood stocks in Poblenou’s buildings

Circular economy opportunities for reusing wood resources in Poblenou – Barcelona

Words by IAAC & Metabolic

Introduction

Poblenou is a neighborhood situated on the north-east of Barcelona, in the district of Sant Martí. It was considered one of Spain’s most important industrial areas, known in the past as “The Catalan Manchester”. Since the late ’60s has suffered a profound deindustrialisation process, leaving behind its characteristic working-class community fabric as well as many empty lots warehouses. After a period of decay, Poblenou underwent a strong territorial transformation, with the 1992 Olympic Games being the main trigger for this change. On account of its organization, dozens of commercial facilities as well as streets and industrial spaces were demolished. Since then, Poblenou has been a testbed for different urban visions, such as the “Forum de las Culturas” in 2004, or the first Barcelona superblock implemented in 2016. The BIT Habitat (Barcelona Institute of Technology for the Habitat) agency, opened its doors in Poblenou also in 2015.

Image 1. Source: Fab Lab Barcelona

In 2000, Barcelona city council launched the 22@ plan, which fostered the transformation of Poblenou as a new technological district. Since the approval of the plan, and more intensely after the pandemic period in 2021, national and international companies, service businesses and innovation start-ups have been attracted to set up their headquarters in the district.

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While some companies and public facilities were more interested in preserving Poblenou’s heritage identity by adapting old factories and combining them with innovative architecture, some international companies demanded modern headquarters with technology facilities. As a result of these urban transformations, many old buildings in Poblenou have to give way to new construction – a process that leaves behind demolition and construction waste. While it is difficult to find numbers just for Poblenou, Catalonia as a whole has generated over 5 million tons of construction waste in 2019 – twice as much as in 2013. Along with the disappearance of historic buildings and the emergence of new businesses, the manufacturing profile that played a very important role in the past has also been replaced by service and technology companies and consequently has lost visibility and presence in the neighborhood. However, even with barriers for production licenses and increasing rental prices, Poblenou contains an important variety of local manufacturers, material providers, and production spaces. These actors, who are often found hidden inside old factories, sharing industrial spaces, and following collaborative models, are key to fostering local production and a regenerative circular economy.

Identifying fabrication facilities, craftspeople, and manufacturers will play an important role in understanding the potential for circular practices in this district. In parallel, we seek to understand what types of material are being used, re-used, and wasted in order to identify opportunities for intervention. We decided to focus our research on wood use and wood waste because it is used, re-used, and wasted in large quantities. In addition, numerous woodworkers and carpenters work in the district and could play a role in implementing new circular strategies with the material. We aim to map and understand the availability of wood from the demolition and construction sector, and to identify the potential for reuse of these materials by manufacturers in the neighborhood.

The Barcelona pilot mapping strategy

To understand the potential of circular wood production for Poblenou and Sant Marti district, we adopted both a birds-eye view on urban wood waste, as well as a close-up deep dive into local wood resources within our community’s businesses. With this complementary bottom-up and top-down approach, we can begin to understand the complex social connections and knowledge exchanges among actors and to analyze barriers and opportunities for a local circular economy. The collected data has been organized, visualized and analyzed into different map views on the interactive KUMU platform.

How have we approached this task? First of all, we started with a bottom-up approach by  interviewing local producers, makers, creative spaces and local businesses who were interested in joining Make Works [1] Catalonia, an online platform that aims to make local manufacturing more accessible.  During each  interview and site visit with local manufacturers, we record the types of materials used for production, waste materials generated during production, their machines, their processes, their traditions and other capacities and skills. The aim is to grow the Make Works Catalonia community while also identifying manufacturers [1] potential role in improving material circularity.

Figure 1. Wood stock distribution over the neighborhoods in the Sant Martí District. Source: Metabolic

Figure 2. Percentage of the Sant Martí’s total Gross Surface Area per building type. Source: Metabolic