Magora was our master's dissertation project at The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC). The project site was Barcelona’s industrial area of Poblenou.
Site: Pere IV, Barcelona, Spain
Site area: 9,8 ha
Concept: Once a prosperous zone, the site in Pere IV has been severely affected by economic issues and is literally decaying with high rates of unemployment, heavy pollution, and dying industries.
Magora is about free off-the-grid clean energy, urban agriculture, public cultural spaces, and cradle-to-cradle production. Conceptually, our design poposal is an infinite loop where energy, matter, production, and distribution follow an endless cycle. Practically, the project is based on a functional prototype, developed with the help of theoretical physicist Josep Perello, that produces continuous clean energy with the help of magnetism. This prototype, we suggest, can be enlarged and provide free energy at city scale. An ideal system of this type would be a pepetuum mobile. In reality, however, the system would lose energy from air friction. The lost energy is replaced with solar energy and heat loss from onsite and neighboring factories and fed to the magnetic infrastructure.
Tutors: Enric Ruiz Geli, Mireia Luzarraga, Josep Perello, Iker Mugarra
Teammates: Georgios Angelou, Roopa Sharma, Elif Gungor, Diego Colinas
This is a video presenting part of the concept behind Magora.
It starts as a conversation between physicist Nikola Tesla, economist Jeremy Rifkin and architect William McDonough - yes that's how they look now. I composed the background music (although I really only played with a few numbers in a bunch of random functions).
Another video describing the concept behind Magora. This one is an earlier version of conceptual work related to our project. Back in 2013 circular economy was not a big thing.
Music is Radiohead - Lotus Flower.