Barcelona Olympic Village and Port

David Mackay, Partner, MBM Arquitectes, Barcelona, Spain, gave a presentation on the Barcelona Olympic Village and Port development.

He focussed on the legacy of the Barcelona Olympic Village and Port and, with reference to other waterfront cities, detailed the challenges that must be addressed for waterfront regeneration to have a lasting and positive impact.

Biography

David Mackay, of Irish and English descent, was born in the early 1930s and has been practising architecture for 50 years in Barcelona with his partners Josep Martorell and Oriol Bohigas and, since 2000, also with Oriol Capdevila and Francesc Gual.

Apart from many housing and urban projects the team is probably best known for the urban design of the Barcelona Olympic Village and Port in 1992. Since then they have been commissioned for urban design by more than 50 European cities. The ‘Vision’ for Plymouth’ was awarded the 2006 Silver Jubilee Cup by the Royal Town Planning Institute.

The 20,000 m2 Design Museum – the Disenny Hub, or DHUB – in Barcelona started construction in 2008 and was completed in 2009.

David has been a member of the Senate Advisory Committee for the Unification of Berlin and he was advisor to Dublin City Council, and led the Plymouth Design Panel for four years. David was guest professor at Washington University, Saint Louis in 1981 and Wisconsin University, Milwaukee in 1986. He was Senior Design Fellow from 2000 – 2001 at the London School of Economics within the City Design and Social Science Programme.

In November 2004, David was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by the University of Plymouth. He is also an Honorary Member of the Bund Deutscher Architekten, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.

He has written several books, notably ‘A vision for Plymouth’ in 2004 and ‘Catala de Rutruc’ (his memoirs) which were published in English in 2009, as well as numerous articles. He has given frequent lectures.