Preserving historic architecture seems at odds with renovating buildings to meet modern sustainability standards. One Spanish university, however, is bridging these two worlds – by reviving traditional construction methods. It just so happens that d-Lab is also reviving social infrastructure in an otherwise shrinking city.
As Romina Canna, d-Lab Director at IE School of Architecture and Design locked the door to a medieval building in Segovia, Spain, she was approached by an elderly man. She noticed him walking with the aid of sticks.
“He asked me, ‘When are you going to open?’ and I said, ‘Well, I don’t really know. It’s not up to me.”
Originally, this solid stone structure in the old town served as the gaol and later as a public library, it sat empty for many years and fell into disrepair – until the d-Lab team began renovating it.
Before now, she had already realised that restoring an historic building can do much more than preserve the aesthetics of built heritage; it also provides opportunities for reviving important social infrastructure. Somehow, the old gent sensed it too.
“He told me, ‘I hope that you do it soon because I haven’t had a place to go for years.’ It made me think a lot. A neighbourhood that has no places for people to go to cannot work – that’s why it’s dying.”
Segovia, a Shrinking City
Little more than an hour’s drive from Madrid, picturesque Segovia enjoys a dry, inland climate, and sits in what the nation refers to as the “green belt” of Spain. But the local population is diminishing, a trend the region shares with other rural municipalities in the country. The city’s job market is dominated by tourism and the public sector; the lack of other industries is pushing young people to seek opportunities in bigger cities.
By the time Romina Canna moved to Segovia in 2011, 47 per cent of buildings in the old town stood unused.
It’s hard to align this with Segovia’s popularity as a tourist destination. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage City, the old town is punctuated by grand architecture, much dating back to the Middle Ages. Some – like the still-standing Roman aqueduct – is up to 2000 years old.
Like many of these buildings, the old goal needed preservation work. As did the one now serving as the municipal library and cultural centre, La Casa de la Lectura. That’s why the mayor called it “a poisoned gift” when, in 2016, it was donated to the city by the state. This was at a time when much of the public infrastructure like doctor surgeries had already shut down – a direct result of a dwindling permanent population and, with it, resources.
On top of that, “it was a 100 per cent protected building, so you could not do any transformation,” Romina informs us. Which begs the question: how do we align the human fondness for preserving historic architecture with the need for sustainability and social infrastructure?
D-Lab
IE University has campuses in Madrid and Segovia, the latter of which hosts roughly a quarter of the institution’s 10,000 students. This is where Romina also works as Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Design Studio Area at the School of Architecture and Design.
She is a licensed architect, holds a PhD, and is head of Design Lab (d-Lab), a space where architecture and design undergraduates can get hands-on with projects for public institutions. It’s completely voluntary, but for the 20 students each semester that participate, it’s a rare chance to put what they learn in the classroom into practice, and Segovia’s built environment serves as the canvas.
In standard practice, an architect’s work is completed when the building is constructed, with “very little engagement on the architects or designer side happening postproduction”. Romina regrets this. When people start using a building, that’s “when you have the opportunity to measure how the design works and what lessons you can take for the next one”. With d-Lab, students get to observe how effective their contributions truly are.
The germ of this concept emerged in 2013: Romina wondered whether the fortunes of Segovia could be improved if the university worked together with the city and became more active in the community.
The university is not just like an educational institution that happens to be in Segovia; it also can be part of the active tissue of the city.
Skip forward a few years, and it was exactly this that led the mayor to ask Romina for a project for La Casa de la Lectura; a project which also needed to preserve the building’s integrity and historical structure – at minimal cost. It was a challenge she couldn’t refuse.
“There is a certain naivety in what we do, because we work with students,” Romina admits. “And it is the naivety that enables us to navigate a complex environment with an optimistic attitude.”
A view of the results of d-Lab’s work on the Casa de la Lectura. Image credit: Whit Preston
Sustainability in the Built Environment
As a conscientious architect with an eye on the future, Romina always encourages her students to incorporate sustainability in their designs. She also challenges their preconceptions by giving equal consideration to social sustainability as they do to environmental impacts. Which, she explains, is formed from a trio of “social cohesion, inclusion, and resilience”.
With this basis, Romina works with her students not to focus on architectural exuberance, but to explore “how people feel or identify in a certain space”. They learn to make “the production of social infrastructures and the points of cohesion of relationships” central to their designs. It’s these social links and the opportunities for connection that keep a city like Segovia alive, she notes.
Drawing inspiration from local traditions and the way people live, d-Lab developed an architectural strategy for the Casa de la Lectura, which also protected historic architectural features. They did this by incorporating traditional construction techniques, characteristic of the city’s historic facades – symbols of its cultural identity – into the restoration of the interior. The project aimed to create an inclusive, open space that serves as new social infrastructure for the benefit of Segovia’s inhabitants.
What a Relief!
Historically, facades in the old town were beautified using a technique named after the city: Esgrafiado Segoviano. It’s a form of bas relief with geometrical figures and was widespread thanks to being cheap and beautiful.
“It is part of the language of the city.”
Thanks to d-Lab, such reliefs would adorn the so called ‘plaza,’ an exhibition and community space near the entrance hall. “But rather than the traditional geometric figures that relate to the Arabic past of Spain, it will be a reinterpretation of the technique using letters” – a direct reference to La Casa de la Lectura being “the house of reading”.
This appeased the protection regulations and locals liked what they saw. The students also placed interactive games in the library, based on familiar design styles like mosaics, further inviting the public back into this space.
Students working on Esgrafiado Segoviano style tiles for Casa de la Lectura. Image credits: d-Lab
Institutional Relations
This account makes it all sound simple, but Romina tells us that the expectations were high and institutions – public and governmental – were, and can be, sceptical about the work being in the hands of students.
Trying to convince people by words alone is the wrong approach, she notes.
When someone has their mind set, it’s very difficult to change that, especially when it’s related to processes and bureaucracy.
Like the old gent who was keen to make the former prison his new social centre, many of the doubts from officials were “neutralised when they saw the result and when they were included in the process of design”.
A few years after La Casa reopened, the authorities were receiving so many applications to hold community events there – like lectures, presentations, and exhibitions – that they couldn’t process licenses fast enough. The old city was beginning to thrive again with a place to be.
Despite this apparent turnaround, Segovia’s population of around 54,000 people is still in decline, and the student presence is a significant proportion of this.
The university understands that it must therefore play an active part in social cohesion. It will do so by adding its own spaces to the growing shared social infrastructure.
Celebrating Public Places
IE University will open its new Creative Campus in 2025, having made a commitment that the campus will have a public-facing element, where citizens can interact with students’ projects.
It should be an easy transition as there’s precedence. The existing campus is one of the main venues for the Spanish arm of the world famous Hay Festival, which pops up in the city each September.
Romina echoes the “huge potential for producing an impact” that universities have in declining towns. One reason is the perspectives and experiences from outside Segovia – and outside Spain – that students can offer. That, and their immense creativity, which Romina calls “a super powerful tool”.
Results of d-Lab’s work on the Casa de la Lectura. Image credit: Whit Preston
New Buildings, New Infrastructure
The d-Lab team is building on the success of La Casa with six additional “mini libraries”. Scattered around Segivia. Las Casetas de las Biblio de Verano – summer houses – are made from local sustainable materials.
It’s a project Romina describes as “a success and a failure, all at the same time”.
For those unable to reach the central library, it brought the same socio-cultural benefit to satellite locations.
However, the d-Lab team only designed the structures. City hall put out a tender for the construction, “and unfortunately, they always give the projects to those offering the better budget.”
As Romina points out, the cheapest offer isn’t always the most cost-effective – and certainly doesn’t guarantee quality.
The winners of the tender, she explains, had very little experience of working with wood for such a project. “The construction was truly complicated, with many problems due to unexpected and budget related changes in materials and details.”
Students assemble the Casetas de las Biblio de Verano. Image credits: Romina Canna & Roberto Arribas
Always An Opportunity
Rather than feel disappointment, Romina helped her students see the lessons this offers.
We have done many things. Many of them have been successes, some of them might look like failures. But in the end, we have learned so much.
“First, the architect or the designer does not always have the capacity to control the whole process. I think that you have to assume that there are some things that you do not have control over.”
Second, a mismatch between design and construction doesn’t necessarily spell failure. People still got their mini libraries.
“It was a huge success in terms of what it did in the public spaces. People were super excited to have that social infrastructure. They were using them a lot.” From adults reading newspapers, to kids taking books away to read in the grass during their school summer holidays, the libraries were a hit!
“There is also an interesting lesson in terms of the design,” Romina concludes. “The point of design at the end is not this impeccable object, but rather what the object does.”
A Model for the Future
Romina tells us that 47 per cent of Spain’s population lives in cities of less than 50,000 inhabitants, and nine per cent reside in towns of less than 10,000. As a practice and as a tool to offer alternatives, she says that design “doesn’t get to those places, because they do not have the institutional structures or the money to support it”.
This needs to change. As d-Lab shows, good design is about giving people a place to go and to interact; it’s about providing public spaces where citizens feel connected, supported, and empowered to have a say in their city. It is a right, Romina points out, not a luxury.
At least for Segovia, the countdown to collapse may have been averted thanks to a handful of students who have thought holistically about what sustainability can do for a community.
They’re also to be praised for reviving the traditional construction methods, which has made the preservation of these historic monuments possible.
Maybe it’s right that we look at the priorities in that order. After all, without a citizenry, who are we saving the wonders of the built environment for?