The aim of ‘A Vila da Mañá’ is to change the model of town or city, we believe that another one can be possible. This is achieved through the protagonist participation of local children and adolescents who, by working with fundamental concepts through tactical urban planning actions, become active citizens capable of transforming their spaces.

La Opinión A Coruña 07/09/2020

“How much is a meter and a half?”

“With the program ‘A Vila do Mañá’, Sandra González analyzes or designs the cities that are adapted to the new measures derived from Covid-19. To verify it, saíu á rúa, in Arzúa, with boys and girls who used floats to measure safety distance. “Many times there are no where to walk”, indicates an architect from Coruña

“How many people know how much is a meter and a half?” asks Coruña architect Sandra González, creator and director of the program A Vila do Mañá, which analyzes, together with the smaller ones, or design of cities and promotes the recovery of spaces for you pawns At the initiative now adds a new condition: keep a safe distance to avoid contagion. “We are in a new situation, a new reality, and we have to see if the cities are adapted to the new measures,” she explains.

To prove it, she walks with boys and girls through streets and avenues. This weekend I went to quenda de Arzúa. As accessories for the walk, mask and float. “Let’s give the participants floats of one meter and 30 centimeters so that they are aware of the distance that they have to keep, especially now that they start or school,” she says.

Moitos were surprised to see or lonxe that they ran into some doutros. But that was not the objective of the activity, except to know if the cities are prepared for this new reality. “Nalgunha small street we didn’t even get in,” reveals the architect, who would like to take this initiative to “bigger cities.”

It is the first time after the lockdown that A Vila do Mañá comes into action, because many activities “had to be cancelled” due to the increase in infections. Sandra González defends that the pandemic showed that “more spaces are needed for the peons.” “It’s time to reformulate cities. Don’t escape to the countryside. A city has to have a new identity. What sex or what does it have to be, that is, for people,” she summarizes.

We seus smaller walks, the architect confirms that “many times there is no where to walk”. “The cities are not adapted. They ask us to become aware of the coronavirus, but in most of the streets it is impossible. The beirarrúas need to be one meter wide, so you have to add the terraces and the cars,” she says.

Thus is born a “new opportunity” for cities. “Like A Coruña, which is trying to criminalize some areas”, she gives as an example, at the same time that she bets on “humanizing everything a little more” so that these places “recover their identity”. An idea that she always transmits to two workshops participating years. Ata o mércores will continue to explore Arzúa and Sandra González xa pensante no seguinte challenge.”

‘A Vila do Maña’ works with three-dimensional elements, based on Froebel’s “third gift”.
In architecture we have Froebel as a reference, through Frank Lloyd Wrigth who was educated with this method. It is a system based on the creativity and intuition of the child through direct experience, play and nature. It creates a pedagogical resource based on ‘gifts’ and ‘occupations’. The ‘gifts’ are pedagogical materials that do not change, but are transformed; the ‘occupations’ are activities in which children play by transforming the objects they manipulate. The ‘gifts’ are precursors of today’s building blocks.

The aim of ‘A Vila da Mañá’ is to change the model of town or city, we believe that another one can be possible. This is achieved through the protagonist participation of local children and adolescents who, by working with fundamental concepts through tactical urban planning actions, become active citizens capable of transforming their spaces.

In this case we work with sustainability, reflecting on the way in which we relate to the planet and making girls, boys, and teenagers aware that what is sustainable consists of a balance between what allows us to develop our lives and what does not compromise the survival of future generations. And so, realizing that we only have one planet with limited resources that must be taken care of.

To raise awareness about the inclusion of green in the city, girls, boys, and teenagers are proposed to create these bombs, which are made up of a part of clay, natural fertilizer, and a mixture of complementary seeds, in this case the so-called Aztec or pre-Columbian mixture was used (beans, corn, pumpkin…), developed by the Japanese Masanobu Fukuoka.

The aim of ‘A Vila da Mañá’ is to change the model of town or city, we believe that another one can be possible. This is achieved through the protagonist participation of local children and adolescents who, by working with fundamental concepts through tactical urban planning actions, become active citizens capable of transforming their spaces.

In this case, the landscape is worked on, looking for the interaction between the built, the more natural and the intermediate territories. Understanding how people build and modify the landscape and how we inhabit it, and it builds us and our identity.

With all this, a colourful mural is created thanks to the coloured geotextile envelopes, in which earth, water and the pumps are introduced, and which will gradually be complemented by the green of the plants born, prepared by themselves.

The aim of ‘A Vila da Mañá’ is to change the model of town or city, we believe that another one can be possible. This is achieved through the protagonist participation of local children and adolescents who, by working with fundamental concepts through tactical urban planning actions, become active citizens capable of transforming their spaces.

In this case, the village is worked on, like its habitat, its game board to be discovered. Understanding its structure, conformation, morphology, its voids and its fillings, its history, its traditions, and its symbolic and immaterial issues is essential to be able to reflect on how they move from one site to another, the routes, the points important where the lives of the girls, boys and teenagers of the community develop.

“The purpose of art is to impart the feeling about things as they are perceived instead of as they are known (or conceived). The “find objects strange” technique of art, of making forms difficult, of increasing the difficulty and magnitude of perception is not aesthetic as an end itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the quality or artistic essence of an object; the object is not the important thing. ”

Viktor Shklovski

To understand how the inhabitants, both current and future, perceive their town, we will use the following strategy: we set off ‘adrift’ with a large golden frame, so that during our wandering, we frame those urban elements that are important to them (an experience based on the work of O’Grady). Who have been the protagonists of this ‘A Vila do Mañá’ experience? On this occasion, during their wandering, they have reDISCOVERED places in their town, perhaps forgotten ones.

With ‘A Vila do Mañá’, the village in which they live is not an abstract idea, nor a series of small partial images; it begins to be understood as a much more complex and expansive environment, bringing us closer to the notion of habitat: the space that transcends its physical location in a territory where we fulfil our needs, establishing relationships with others and with the environment, both natural and built; involving processes in which it transforms, but in which we are also transformed.

Work begins with PERCEPTION. How do the future inhabitants of the place perceive their village or city? To explore this, participants are invited to use simple drawings to show us which elements they consider fundamental or particularly interesting in their village or city. In this way, we can understand their individual views of the place they live in and begin to build a collective vision shared by all participants.