Buits Verds /Green Voids
Green voids are those spaces that the urbanisation of the city has left bare, where nature is once again sprouting thanks to the involvement of neighbours, turning them into urban allotments and gardens. Small lungs that open up between party walls, forgotten plots of land, to invite us to make peace with nature, as the natural beings that we are.
Green voids documents these spaces since 2020 through a photographic project, and is born from the need to highlight the idea that cities have to make a change towards a more habitable, green model, closer to the people we live in. This project aims to highlight people's interest in a greener and more habitable city model, and how, in short, the residents have taken the initiative to recover these plots in order to humanise them, to create social links between people and the environment.
Green voids compiles photographs of 15 plots of land in different neighbourhoods of the city that are currently used as allotments and urban gardens as a result of neighbourhood work.
Here we try to transmit the essence, the idiosyncrasy of the place and its people, the activities that coexist and the common points between all these small urban lungs.
The ownership of the land occupied and the type of management is in all of them different and singular (from spaces ceded by the City Council to spaces squatted by the neighbours). This gives us an insight into the variety of situations, the background and history of each of these unique spaces, and the need for people to create places of coexistence that encourage a relationship with nature.
Green Voids can also be a visual and practical guide for all those neighbours interested in generating a similar community initiative, whether public or private.
I thank all these people who have opened the door to these realities so that we can bear witness to them and make clear the need to make a radical change in the design of urban planning in cities.