Civic Ground: The Architecture of Urban Repair is a Studio Report from the Spring 2026 semester at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, based on a studio of the same name, taught by Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga, John Portman Design Critics in Architecture.

Situated in Vallcarca, Barcelona, the studio explored the terrain vague as a space of suspended urbanity—defined by memory, instability, and latent potential. Rather than imposing order, the studio investigated how architecture can work in continuity with the existing landscape, engaging with fragments and topography to repair without erasure. At its core is a public program inspired by the Catalan ateneu and civic center—spaces that support exchange, learning, and collective life. Architecture here acts as a civic catalyst, mediating between intimacy and shared experience while rooting new interventions in the specificity of place.

This report is available to read on the Harvard GSD’s issuu site.