Last month, Latitudes facilitated three sessions for the new Master’s Degree in Critical Contextual Design at Elisava, directed by Cristina Goberna Pesudo. These sessions were part of a class titled “Environments: What Extraction? What Nature?” conceived by artist Lara Almarcegui, a long-time collaborator and friend. Each student developed a research project at the intersection of architecture, art, design, and spatial practice, responding to local sites of resource extraction near Barcelona, including the Montjuïc quarries and the Sant Adrià de Besòs Incinerator.

Marina Olivares and MC Love titled their project “On the Rocks.” It explored the intersection of historical and contemporary extraction practices near La Llagosta by juxtaposing the granite aggregate quarrying operations of Canteras Canro with their discovery of the Pou de Glaç de Can Donadeu, a centuries-old ice well in the same vicinity. Unable to gain direct access to the quarry due to its heightened security, their investigation pivoted to satellite imagery via Google Earth and outreach to La Xopera, a local ecological group advocating for the ice well’s preservation amidst the quarry’s encroachment.

Their project reckoned with the explosive ecological impact of quarrying, which reshapes the landscape in dual ways—through the physical removal of material and its repurposing into urban infrastructure. It also interrogated satellite technology as another form of extraction and terrain distortion. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, speculative renderings, and the largely forgotten history of pre-industrial ice production, the project culminated in a video essay. This work contrasted the destructive immediacy of modern extraction with the ingenuity and sustainability of the practices embodied by the ice well.

Projects like “On the Rocks”, alongside the other students’ equally ambitious inquiries, open new space for a softening of the often-rigid disciplinary boundaries in education and point to the potential of contextual design as a framework for novel forms of practice. We’re curious to see how this Masters evolves.