Community Architects - Arquitectos de Cabecera (AC) is a methodology towards the city raised from the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB). It is directed by Ibon Bilbao and Josep Bohigas, both professors at ETSAB. It was born spontaneously from a student demand in an assembly movement in 2013, seeking for a bottom-up architecture and an an education system more linked to the neighbor’s daily problems. 

AC approach departs from the domestic space as the starting point to improve the city. Architecture as a discipline aims to re-establish its social role in a context of social, economic and political crisis. In 2013, the students asked the professors for altered teaching - ar for the last two weeks of the spring term. Open ETSAB-ETSAV was organized by both students and academic programs. Among all the activities, Arquitectos de Cabecera was the workshop organized by the Housing and City studio. Students worked again in Raval, the medieval neighborhood of Barcelona, re-visiting the same place they had been working on along the year. However, this time they were asked to enter into the houses, interview the neighbors and offer their knowledge as students of architecture, in an attempt to near the figure of the architect to the society. 

In 2015 Arquitectos de Cabecera was part of Piso Piloto, an exhibition in CCCB (Contemporary Cultural Centre of Barcelona), which focused on the problematic of housing in Barcelona and compared it with Medellín, in Colombia. Among all the activities, AC built a Citizen’s Attention Office. The workshop of 2015 worked on the case studies that emerged from this office, which was a shift from the first year: the students were not knocking at people’s houses but neighbors were approaching AC.

Among all the case worked in 2015, the most complex one was Casa Fabrica Can 60, an old textile manufacture block from 1833, which was used by different social and cultural entities. The factory had been bought by an international investor, who was doing ‘moving’ to its inhabitants in order to be able to demolish the building and build luxury flats in the centre of the city, an area highly gentrified. Two actions took place along with previous collaboration of local entities (Fundació Tot Raval, Sostre Cívic). Together they already at the beginning of the project elaborated a booklet with the cartography of the building, which intended to explain that importance of the building relied on its physical architecture, the entities that used the space and the production of what was done there. Therefore, material and immaterial heritage were valued equally. Secondly, to organize an event to open the building and present the situation to the public and involve as much people and neighbor’s as possible. After a long process that lasted several months, the municipality bought the building and listed around 25 old manufacture buildings of Raval. This fact meant achieving one of the goals that students claimed at the beginning of AC: an academic program of the School of Architecture, along with neighbors and local entities, had a direct impact on the city by making possible the preservation of historical heritage.

These acts are seen by Ibon Bilbao as a natural academic approach that the university should address. According to him, as a public institution University has to be the link between community and local administration. Unlike professional practice and administration, the academic environment is the one that has time and forces to think about the city from the singularities of the domestic space. Otherwise education would become too static and detached from the reality of the city. Arquitectos de Cabecera is since September 2017 a fifth year studio in ETSAB, while at the same time it runs workshops in cities such as Barcelona, Medellin, Bogota and Turin.