Cristina Llorente is an architect from the ETSA of Barcelona and graduated by the UOC in the postgraduate course "City Government: Citizens' Rights and Public Policies." She combines a wide experience in architecture studios, construction companies and public administration with an early fondness for education, interpretation and narrative creation. In 2009 she founded Arquitectives together with Pablo Amor, a project where children are taught to take a critical look at urban planning.

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From 2012 to 2016 Cristina and Pablo developed EMaC for schools with the aim of stimulating the student's body, mind, and imagination to explore how buildings and cities are designed and constructed. Since 2012 they represent the Superior Council of Architects of Spain (CSCAE) in the work program of UIA WP Architecture & Children. She has given conferences, workshops, made public art projects and cultural management in various cities and written articles in different physical and digital media on related topics. They have also carried out various teacher training courses.

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In 2014 they designed the educational material “Edu and the best house in the world” that allows the application of various subjects of the educational curriculum through play game?. They have also developed numerous urban interventions such as 60.40.31, CaaaASA or Collective Imaginary, as well as participatory urban planning projects such as SOLAR, Camino Escolar Seguro in Alcudia, playful environments or urban acupuncture.

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Proposal

In 2016, we began to coordinate SOLAR, a project that would transform empty lots into public spaces through participatory design processes. On the afternoon of the 12th of July, we celebrated their presentation party in the plaza of La Soledad neighborhood.

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You cannot play with a ball in the plaza of La Soledad neighborhood. The prohibition signal and the reproaches and threats from the neighbors (adults) make it very clear. They, the little ones, came to ask what we were doing, what was so important for us to think we had the right to throw them out of the public space, demonizing something as wonderful as playing on the street. We told them that we would project a video, that we would present a project, that the press would come and that, to compensate for such pseudo-expropriation of the plaza, we would invite them to chocolate ice cream. They looked at us incredulous and we looked back at them, disappointed. At that moment we understood (probably we had already understood it, but it was then when we felt it strongly) that participation must be present at every moment of the process. During the seminar, we will practice how to have more ears than hands, how to put aside our arrogance of adults, and technicians, and politicians, and the media to LISTEN and to know what is really wanted. So, even though it is step by step, we stop thinking that we are better than a soccer ball.