BA Field to Seville

This April, from the 9^th to the 13^th, 45 students from BA2 and BA1 and two tutors travelled to Seville and Cordoba in Spain to visit the cities and their architecture. We needed to fly there, but we promised to balance our carbon footprint by not eating meat in the next six months.

We departed from Abercromby Square to Manchester Airport very early in the morning of Tuesday, April 9 (exactly at 2:15 am). We arrived at Seville Airport at 11:30 where a bus was waiting for us to take us to the city, all perfectly coordinated by Clarity (special thanks to Michaela Halliwell). We checked in and, after a nap (following the Spanish tradition), we headed together to Encarnacion Square to see the Metropol Parasol, an interesting urban canopy built by Jurgen Mayer in 2011, after winning an international competition. That night we had the first common dinner in a typical fried fish Sevillian bar.

After a “stormy night”, on Wednesday, we visited the Sevilla School of Architecture where Placido Gonzalez gave us an introduction to the city and its monuments. After this, we moved to the city centre to visit some of the most important buildings in Seville: the Cathedral and the Real Alcazar (the Moorish Palace), both of them part of the UNESCO World Heritage. The day finished with all of us dispersed to have dinner in the multitude of bars in Seville’s city centre.

On Thursday, we rented a bus to take us to Cordoba to see the Great Mosque. After a one-and-a-half hour trip, enjoying the Andalusian landscape, we arrived in Cordoba to spend a few hours enjoying what Rafael Moneo considers the best piece of architecture in the world. Back in Seville, we dropped in the Cartuja Monastery to visit it and move from there to see the remains of the 1992 Universal Exposition and the new additions to the area such as the Pelli tower and the Caixa Forum building by Sevillian architect Guillermo Vazquez Consuegra.

On Friday, we travel to Bioalverde, very close to Seville to visit the biggest participatory construction in Europe led by Santiago Cirugeda (https://recetasurbanas.net/). He received us there and explained the complexities and excitement of a construction process involving plenty of civilians, including children. After that, we suggested students to discover the city by themselves and get lost in six different neighbourhoods: Santa Cruz, Triana, Arenal, Macarena, Los Remedios and Distrito Sur. We met later in the Alameda de Hercules to have our last dinner and drinks together.

On Saturday morning, we still have a bit of time to do some last-minute shopping before leaving sunny Seville. We arrived at the airport a bit earlier to be able to see the airport, a building designed by Rafael Moneo. A few hours later, Manchester “welcomed” us with a cold and rainy day. The trip was over…

For every building we visited, we posted in our shared Google calendar two questions that needed to be explored and answered by a sketch. We saw our students sitting in different places learning by sketching. We think that this is a fundamental learning they got, and some of them were so generous to share these drawings with all of you.  

We missed a few students who didn’t get their visas on time due to the Easter holidays in the Spanish consulate. We particularly missed our colleague Naeem, who didn’t get the visa on time either, and with whom the sketching sessions would have been real master classes.

Ben Prince and Paco Mejias (both of us counting days to be able to eat beef again)