A laboratory for local cultural practices

Arente, a rente, arrente: (Del port.). adv. A ras [= casi tocando o al mismo nivel de una cosa]

Arrente La Palma es un proyecto iniciado en 2023 que busca establecer conexiones entre agentes locales, saberes y expertos para explorar políticas culturales innovadoras que pongan en valor y protejan la cultura de la isla. Su objetivo principal es reivindicar la importancia de la cultura en el contexto contemporáneo de las zonas alejadas de los grandes núcleos urbanos, especialmente vinculadas con el paisaje que las envuelve, tejiendo redes sólidas de apoyo y aprendizaje. La zona de actuación principal es el territorio del Valle de Aridane, donde las condiciones del paisaje abrupto han creado límites fronterizos que aíslan y ponen en riesgo la cultura.

Seeking to raise the profile of the cultural dimension of these landscapes, the project is based on fieldwork, exploring the territory alongside local cultural practitioners in order to document all the knowledge and traditions that often go unnoticed by cultural institutions. In this way, it becomes a living laboratory of local cultural practices, a creative process for testing new methodologies that may inspire future cultural initiatives.

Between autumn 2023 and summer 2025, we explored La Palma through curated walks, sit-down discussions, meetings and events with experts and residents of the island.

The curated walks enabled us to explore, through direct experience, the dilemmas between the rural, the urban and the cultural. The tours of El Llano de las Cuevas and the outskirts of El Paso raised issues such as the abandonment of traditional crops, land stewardship, conflicts between rural and urban land uses, fire risk planning, and the revitalisation of heritage features such as threshing floors.

The round-table discussions became spaces for dialogue between cultural practitioners, experts and institutions. The first, held at the Pino de la Virgen, highlighted the over-scheduling of events and the precarious situation of cultural practitioners, calling for support networks and the revitalisation of abandoned spaces to foster a sense of community. The second, held on a threshing floor next to the church of El Paso, highlighted the ethnographic and intangible heritage at risk of disappearing and proposed new social uses for threshing floors, cisterns and ovens.

Two closing events embodied the project’s spirit of ‘pairing’. At the Pedro García Salguero’s almond eco-farm in Tacande, a discussion on land stewardship and generational succession was accompanied by a demonstration of traditional almond cheese-making and a tasting of delicious local cheeses.

The second event, held in front of the Virgen del Pino Chapel, centred on the heritage of the Valle de las Cuevas, featuring a live mural by the artist Ángela Glezal and a set by DJ Monterreina that transformed the public space into a dance floor. The furniture used for the activities was built at the municipal workshop in El Paso with the help of Manolo Villalba and donated to the Town Council for reuse in future programmes.

Rather than a conclusion, Arrente leaves things open-ended: tools to continue thinking about and fostering culture in the region, and a starting point for new connections and future programmes. All the work carried out by the laboratory can be explored through the printed dossier and the online map illustrating the network of stakeholders who have been part of Arrente.

La entrada Arrente La Palma se publicó primero en zuloark.

A Climate Refuge for Infinito Delicias

In the summer of 2026, Infinito Delicias opened its doors as a Climate Refuge for the Delicias neighbourhood and the Arganzuela district. It is an air-conditioned space, open to all and with no fixed programme, conceived as a community facility: a place to meet, rest, work, read, play or simply spend time during the hottest months of the year. Greenery plays a central role: the complex is conceived as an indoor garden where plants act as a living infrastructure capable of structuring the space, creating distinct atmospheres and contributing to the thermal comfort and environmental quality of the refuge.

This participatory project continues the long-term work that Zuloark, through Ultrazul, has been carrying out with Infinito Delicias for years. Rather than simply considering the building’s physical form, we considered how its content and programme might respond to the desire to create a new kind of cultural institution that connects with its surroundings. The Climate Refuge thus represents a new approach to creating spaces within public institutions, demanding new ways of thinking, designing and inhabiting.

The building material: the philosophy of second lives

The Climate Refuge consists mainly of a modular, circular wooden structure assembled on site. The timber used has had several previous lives. It was first used as building material, left over from the construction of the Infinito Delicias building itself. When it came to designing the Refugio, this stock of timber served as the starting point: the structure was designed based on what already existed, not the other way round. Later, some of the planks were transformed into tables for a gastronomic gathering. And at the end of the event, rather than being discarded, they were stored away for future use. In this way, the construction of architecture is understood as an active social and material process connected to its immediate surroundings.

Un cantiere aperto: inhabiting the space whilst it is under construction

Many hands are involved in the creation of the Refugio. Zuloark designs the structure and the strategy that enables many more stakeholders to participate in the process. Students and lecturers from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá are building part of the furniture (the shoe rack, the bookcase, the tables and the centrepiece). The Italian collective Incolto leads workshops on communication and collaborative signage so that the Refugio can express, through the voice of the neighbourhood, Delicias’ relationship with heat and with shared space. And some local residents, throughout the process, contribute their views and help with the design and construction. The main idea is that those who will inhabit the space can also participate in its construction.

Holiday plants: where Vivario’s greenery comes from

This place also aims to become a small hub for neighbourhood renaturalisation. Since its first weeks of operation, it has had a plant nursery run by Infinito Delicias and a system for producing cuttings, with the aim of ensuring that, by the end of the summer, there are more plants than there were at the start.

The project also has the support of the Environment Department of Madrid City Council and the collaboration of the Retiro Greenhouse Nursery, which provides some of the vegetation. As with the materials, the plants continue their journey beyond the summer, being incorporated into new neighbourhood urban gardening initiatives.

Back to the beginning: the refuge’s fourth life

At the end of summer, when the shelter closes, the timber is stored away and the plants are moved to a new home. The planks from the structure will be turned into furniture for neighbourhood gardens in the Moratalaz district, and the plants will help to renaturalise those very same gardens. Once again, the aim is to give all the materials a new lease of life. The cycle continues.

La entrada Infinite Refuge se publicó primero en zuloark.

A stand that transforms into a canopy for the school garden at República de Panamá Public School

Since 2012, we have collaborated with Madrid City Council to design its stand for the National Environmental Congress. Each year, the challenge is to make the pavilion an example of sustainability, where its real purpose lies in the second life it is given after the exhibition.

On this occasion, we worked together with the community of República de Panamá Public School in Madrid, where the structure was relocated to the school playground, creating a shaded area, an amphitheatre, an outdoor classroom, and an extension of the existing school garden.

The design reuses materials sourced from Madrid’s municipal storage facilities: damaged traffic signs, bricks and concrete blocks from the Municipal Stonemasonry Workshop, plants from the Retiro Greenhouse Nursery, mulch from the Migas Calientes plant, logistical support from the Huerto del Retiro Environmental Information and Education Centre, as well as municipal transport services.

After the exhibition, together with the Environmental Education Department, we transformed the stand into an outdoor classroom in the playground of República de Panamá School, reusing it as part of the school’s playground renaturalisation strategy. During the inauguration, a workshop was also held with illustrator David Cárdenas to design and paint the ground around the installation, incorporating representations of native flora and fauna.

Traffic sign poles from the municipal storage facilities support lightweight canvas shades that provide shelter from the sun. The shade cast by the existing trees in the school grounds is also used to make the space more comfortable and habitable throughout the year.

The whole intervention was conceived as an adaptable and flexible system of furniture: an outdoor classroom with two planters, a wooden tiered seating area, and a space for gathering. Together with the shaded areas created, these elements make up the open-air classroom, which can be complemented with movable items typical of any learning space, such as blackboards or chairs.

The native plants from the municipal nurseries not only bring vegetation into the outdoor classroom, but also support educational activities connected to nature, such as observing pollinating insects and caring for the school garden.

Its implementation and use are managed participatively by the teaching staff in coordination with the school community, ensuring its upkeep while fostering a sense of ownership among pupils. It is a pilot project to rethink educational spaces and make use of resources already available in the city to improve school environments, designed with replication in other schools in mind.

La entrada CONAMA 24 se publicó primero en zuloark.

Collaborative design and construction of a greenhouse for the community garden of Matacavalls

The Contorno Urbano team had already invited us in 2019 to collaborate in the framework of the MODUL project with a workshop for the collaborative design and construction of a children’s play space. Since then we have felt a deep affinity, both in our understanding of public space and in our working methods. We shared the idea that urban design should be open, inclusive and situated, and MODUL offered us an opportunity to broaden that spectrum and build a city from plurality.

The greenhouse project arose as a continuation of this neighbourhood space in Matacavalls, where in addition to the children’s playground there is a very active community garden. In conjunction with Contorno Urbano and different active associations in the neighbourhood, the design and construction of this infrastructure was carried out through a collaborative process in several phases:

Phase of recognition and approach to the design

We carried out different walks through the garden to understand the functioning and use of the space and its evolution. In addition, we drew selected plants while the users of the garden exchanged their personal visions about the crops.

Design and construction phase

To tackle the design, we carried out an activity of working with models to compose the space. We started with an element that folded on itself and each child spontaneously created shapes and signified them, creating multiple creatures/greenhouse and a dinosaur. In addition, a wooden bench was built so that the participants could familiarise themselves with the material and the working tools.

Programme ideation phase and management models

As a next step in the co-creation process, we started to think about the multiple uses that the new greenhouse could incorporate. We came up with ideas and concepts such as lockers for people, support for photovoltaic panels, windows for the summer, dinosaurs, tree houses, boats… We also talked about the management of the different spaces in the garden and how the new construction could support the proposed new programmes.

Initial phase of the collaborative construction

Finally, the precise measurement of the work site was carried out, where we were able to discuss and dramatise the options for implementation, access, location of the programme and the route along the piece, until the new location for the greenhouse was redefined on the ground.

Little by little, the Matacavalls park has become a living, inclusive space in permanent transformation, and a point of reference for the neighbourhood. It has grown in surface area, in uses, in care and, above all, in neighbourhood involvement. With participatory processes such as the construction of this greenhouse, MODUL has demonstrated that public space can be a powerful tool for generating active community and improving the quality of life of its inhabitants.

La entrada Matacavalls Greenhouse se publicó primero en zuloark.

A pilot project with the wood workshop in Prison N. 12 of Cerro Carancho in Rivera, Uruguay

In October 2024, Campo Adentro invites us to Uruguay to develop a project with the wood workshop at Cerro Carancho prison, as part of the Festival de la Madera. We propose a collaborative system based on prototyping and furniture construction, creating a space where participants can make decisions throughout the process and propose design solutions—an “unfinished” design enriched by their knowledge and experience.

People deprived of freedom, students, and design professionals collaborate to design and build public spaces while contributing new narratives on the forestry crisis. We co-design and construct two pieces of furniture, fostering a dialogue between the inside and outside of the prison and creating experimental spaces for coexistence, co-creation, and collective reflection.

We work with eucalyptus wood profiles of 4×7 cm, helping mitigate the irresponsible consumption of wood in the country by using recycled and low-impact materials.

One of the pieces remains inside the prison, while the other is installed outside. The proposed construction system allows for design modifications throughout the process, using a structure similar to a truss, based on a modular unit that adapts to different needs.

Through this experience, COM-UNIDAD 12 envisions architecture as a tool for social inclusion, education, and environmental awareness.

La entrada COM-UNIDAD 12 se publicó primero en zuloark.

Navigating towards a climate island: activations of the Costanillas site from Suq Centeno

The Suq Centeno project consists of a series of actions of ‘protest’ and ‘proposal’ against the social, cultural and food degradation of the San Agustín neighbourhood in Córdoba. A souk (from the Arabic süq) is the name given in Spanish to the traditional markets of Arab countries. More than just a place for buying and selling, the Suq is the central meeting place for the active social participation of the community around food and crafts. 

Inciding on ‘learning by doing’ methodologies, Suq proposes eco-social change through the following actions: the organisation of a farmers‘ and artisans’ market, the rethinking of the potential of abandoned plots as climatic-community islands, the construction of an oven as a milestone in a new way of communicating community culinary knowledge and the creation of a library for the neighbourhood.

Workshop for the design and construction of the Climate Classroom

From Zuloark we held a meeting dedicated to the collaborative design and construction of a Climate Classroom for the project. In this workshop, we designed and built a space dedicated to children, equipped with devices that activate biodiversity and serving both as a market stall and as an emerging climate classroom.

The result consists of four different prototypes:

Prototype 1 – Parliament of Bodies: In the abandoned plot of land in Costanillas, the neighbours had begun to cultivate a vegetable garden. But, in order to inhabit the space, it was necessary to share ideas and desires for the place beforehand. For this reason, it was decided to design and build a space for conversation and rest, a symbolic and at the same time functional element: a parliament.

Prototype 2 – Shade: Inhabiting the site for days on end allowed us to see how the passing of the hours gave rise to more sheltered corners and others that were sunnier and more exposed. Thus, it was decided to take advantage of the existing dividing walls to stretch steel cables across the site and fix elements of natural reed on them to provide shade for a good part of the day.

Prototype 3 – Watering cart: The lack of a water supply on the site conditions the choice of the species planted and the dynamics necessary for their care. The easiest way to irrigate the garden was to bring water directly from the fountain of ‘La Piedra escrita’ with buckets or jars, as in the past. It was therefore decided, in collaboration with the artist Alvaro Albaladejo, to build a cart in wood and iron to bring more water from the fountain.

Prototype 4 – Totem: Finally, a representative, identitary and multifunctional device is built, which can be used as a work table, storage, exhibition space and communication support; but above all, it must be an infrastructure that can be modified and adapted to the needs of its users; this is how the Totem was defined.

On Sunday 12th May the third edition of Suq Centeno was held in the Luciana Centeno neighbourhood centre. For this occasion the pieces built during the workshop were taken to the courtyard of the centre, to communicate and make visible the work done during the week in the site.

La entrada Suq Centeno se publicó primero en zuloark.

Design and construction workshop for a children’s playground within the framework of the Modul project in Hospitalet de Llobregat

The Modul project was promoted in 2018 by the City Council of Hospitalet de Llobregat for the transformation of a disused site in the district of La Florida – Les Planes, with the intention of making it safer, suitable for play and inclusive. In 2019, the Contorno Urbano Foundation, a neighbourhood organisation, led the project to regenerate the space, creating a work plan in which our collaborative design and construction workshop is framed.

Our contribution implements the fifth children’s playground infrastructure, followed by the ship container (storage during the process and public equipment when the infrastructures are finished), the fitting out of the accesses and rest furniture, the giant mural on the retaining wall that delimits the space and the climbing wall also inserted in the wall. Many of the infrastructures have a multi-use condition, activating the space in a more continuous way given the different forms of use of the interventions according to the criteria of the users or the activities that are carried out. 

The excellent groundwork previously carried out by the Foundation with local community stakeholders enabled us to establish a well-integrated process of citizen participation in both the design and construction phases of the project. In the weeks prior to the construction, we proposed to the organisers to hold a parallel design workshop: on the one hand, our team would come up with creative options for construction and, on the other hand, the students from various schools in the area would give free rein to their imagination. The only condition we set was to work with the reclaimed materials we had selected from the public works warehouse of the Hospitalet city council.

The most difficult task was to combine the different designs that came out of this process, and we achieved this by working from the unification of the narratives that describe what happens in the space rather than from the diversity of designs. The result was a deconstructed tunnel reusing large pipes and a wooden framework and a corrugated floor made of tyres and wooden slats.

The facility has become self-managed by a network of agents and functions as an open-air community classroom for educational, leisure, sporting and cultural activities.

La entrada Children’s playground MODUL se publicó primero en zuloark.

Curated walks in Madrid’s Fuencarral neighbourhood to rediscover the natural and cultural heritage of its streets

Sendas (o)Cultas is a research project based on practice through different artistic and educational disciplines that provide a critical and reflective look at the disconnection we maintain with the urban nature of our environments.

The aim of Sendas (o)Cultas is to inventory the good environmental, social, artistic and educational practices that take place in neighbourhoods (allotments, meeting places, self-managed centres, community gardens, open spaces, neighbourhood actions, etc.), record them by creating a toolbox (maps, sound files or other formats) and use these learnings to apply them in forgotten spaces in the neighbourhood. The Fuencarral district was chosen for the development of the first path, specifically a strip of land between the wasteland of the future Chamartín operation and the old Fuencarral settlement.

Sendas (O)cultas Fuencarral is a project of Ciudad Huerto, a training itinerary that brings together the learning and experiences of community gardens in the city of Madrid. The project was born with the idea of being able to replicate the methodology in different neighbourhoods of the city. 

But, how do we clear these hidden paths?

Initiatory routes

In the first phase of the project, ‘Initiatory routes’, important agents in the neighbourhood are asked to guide us along a personal or thematic itinerary. These walks are done collectively, contacting neighbours and collectives who live in these corridors or who know them because of their connection with the territory. We work with physical and digital research, mapping urban nature, but also cultural projects or human landscapes.

Extracting learning along the way: The toolbox

The second phase of the project consists of identifying and translating the data extracted from the mapping of the paths into formats that make it possible to transmit what has been learned in a clear and concise way: digital maps, catalogues, sound files or manuals. The new ecological corridors identified hide a large number of intelligences (endemic species, citizen innovations, urban ecosystems) and it is part of the project to be able to identify them in order to make them useful on an urban scale.

Cultural and artistic interferences

In a third phase, artists, botanists and urban culture experts are invited to help us find and make visible the paths towards a city that is friendlier and more respectful of its surroundings: searching for hidden waters, discovering the origins of the flora of our neighbourhood through music or composing a collective sound score are some of the inspiring actions that we carry out on the territory we have travelled through.

Sendas (o)Cultas Festival

The result of this year-long research work was concentrated in the ‘Festival Sendas (O)cultas: Caminar para revelar’, an open-air festival to celebrate and discover what often goes unnoticed. It took place from 22 May to 4 June 2021 and involved walking through the village neighbourhood in search of hidden streams, forgotten stories of former settlers and the plant symphonies hidden in the neighbourhood gardening of its streets.

In addition, three actions were programmed as an artistic ‘distillate’ to be developed in the neighbourhood. Once we had catalogued the PONC (Points of Naturcultural Oblivion) that we discovered in the different thematic itineraries carried out, and using the learning gathered in the toolbox, interventions were carried out in these PONC, such as the installation of totems and plaques in the neighbourhood gardens or the collective planting of fruit trees in the inter-block spaces.

The aim of Sendas (O)cultas is not only to recover and enhance the value of these spaces and practices, but also to encourage dialogue and citizen participation in the construction of more sustainable, just and liveable urban environments.

La entrada Sendas (o)Cultas Fuencarral se publicó primero en zuloark.

Tracing itineraries in Madrid’s Villaverde neighbourhood in search of communities that drive more sustainable changes from their gardens

Sendas (o)Cultas is a research project based on the practice through different artistic and educational disciplines that provide a critical and reflective look at the disconnection we maintain with the urban nature of our environments.

In this project, art and culture are used as tools to communicate the innovation and knowledge of experimental gardening that have emerged from the citizens of Villaverde. The starting point is the discovery of good environmental (Nature-based Solutions (NBS)) and cultural practices that occur in a territory, documenting and extracting the learning observed, enhancing them by transferring them to environmental and social recipes and applying them collectively to deteriorated, forgotten or invisible spaces in the neighbourhood.

Thus, the methodology tested in 2020 with Sendas (o)Cultas Fuencarral is used to build and disseminate new imaginaries and narratives about the socio-environmental paradigm shift in which we are immersed. 

Sendas (o)Cultas Villaverde: Environmental Clinics

If in Fuencarral nature and culture were the connection to implement actions with citizens, in Sendas (O)cultas Villaverde the aim is to investigate the connection between nature and community health to heal the territory and contribute to adapt and mitigate the scenario of climate emergency towards which we are moving and in which the BNS can play a decisive role. One of the means developed for this are the ‘recipes’. The recipe is the traditional and classic format through which popular knowledge has travelled for centuries, a shared and common knowledge. Sendas (O)cultas Villaverde is thus configured as an itinerant clinic that will elaborate and apply environmental and social recipes.

ZASS (‘Yellow Sustainable Sensitive Zones’)

ZASS is a project co-financed by the Montemadrid Foundation that seeks to experiment with a diverse community fabric on new models of gardening that adapt in a more sustainable way to the climate change scenario in which we live.

Sendas (O)cultas proposes the generation of a diverse and open learning community . Through itineraries in which contact is made with the community fabric of the district, exploring local ecosystems, a learning community is forged around experimental gardening that will seek to implement ZASS gardens in the neighbourhood.

Garden Atlas

Building on the experience and complicity of the learning communities in the ZASS phase, this new phase seeks to further expand the recognition of ecosystems in collaboration with the Nomad Garden collective. A mapping of agents and species is being developed through the Garden Atlas platform, recording everything identified during the walks. The photographer Bego Solís accompanies us throughout the process to make a kind of portrait of each gardener and his or her garden.

The open field

In parallel to the artistic interferences, we design our own interventions that support the experimental gardens found in inter-block spaces, balconies and public spaces. The biodiversity of the district’s open spaces is highlighted with the aim of promoting a change in the aesthetics of gardening in public spaces. It also encourages the physical and digital connection of these spaces and promotes the emergence of new experimental gardens.

Sendas (o)Cultas Villaverde-ZASS Festival

Finally, a second edition of the Sendas (o)Cultas Festival is held as the culmination of the project. After travelling around the neighbourhoods to discover the district’s hidden neighbourhood gardening, artists, botanists, landscapers, chefs, etc. are invited to turn these experimental gardens into new scenarios for celebrating, listening, experimenting, prototyping and producing new narratives to reach new audiences.

The Festival is configured around six open and free artistic proposals , which will take place between June and December 2023:

– Sounds from the Third Landscape. Improvised musical piece composed by Chefa Alonso with the Afandice occupational gardening group, inspired by three species of wild plants. Held in the ZASS neighbourhood garden of the María Moliner Library.

– Hand Made Urbanismo. Self-building workshop in the Los Pinos vegetable garden in the San Cristóbal neighbourhood, in collaboration with students from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá.

– Invocamos al Butarque. Sound walk by the artist Susana Jiménez Carmona in collaboration with the Escuela Municipal de Música Antón García Abril de Villaverde along the old bed of the Butarque stream.

– A peripatetic garden. A strolling conversation with the landscape gardener Teresa Galí through the neighbourhood gardening of Villaverde Alto.

– Wild flavours. Gastronomic tasting of dishes made with wild flora by chef Kike Gallardo, from El Herbario Comestible, in the gardens of Afandice.

On 21 March 2024 we celebrated the change of season from Sendas (O)cultas Villaverde with a curation by Bosque Real together with the artists Lorenzo García-Andrade, Cris Blanco and Anto Rodríguez, once again realising the beauty and richness of the natural heritage with which we inhabit the city.

La entrada Sendas (o)Cultas Villaverde se publicó primero en zuloark.

Assisting discussions for the elaboration of Proposals on the Built Environment and Architecture

The PECa! Debates were online debate sessions developed by Zuloark between experts in different fields to open to the public the challenge of developing the Law on the Quality of Architecture and the Built Environment.

The Directorate General of Urban Agenda and Architecture (DGAUA) had to complete the legal framework established by the Land Law and the LOE, taking into consideration the Davos Declaration, and proposed a process of institutional opening that would generate consensus between civil society and professionals. This process was called PECA (Spanish abbreviation for Proposals on the Built Environment and Architecture).

Beyond the conventional process of drafting and processing such a law in Spain, the participatory process PECa! accompanies and opens the debate to the public through its website and thematic meetings between professionals, working groups, sectoral representatives and dissemination among the academic and collegiate sector. Topics such as social, environmental, communication, public, historical protection and innovation are discussed.

The curator’s proposal for the PECa! panel discussions aimed to form a sufficiently diverse, representative, useful and pluralistic group of panellists, taking into account aspects such as gender parity, background, profile and age. The audiovisual proposal, produced in collaboration with Malasombra Estudio, sought to connect the Palacio de Zurbano with the different technical correspondents in different parts of the country.

The Law on the Quality of Architecture was finally approved in the Senate Plenary, without any votes against, in June 2022.

La entrada PECa! Debates se publicó primero en zuloark.