Flujos Comunes
Spanish Biennial, BEAU
2025
Transition and Gravity is our contribution to Flujos Comunes at the 2025 Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennial, curated by Ander Bados and Miguel Ramón. The exhibition explores how architects and planners engage with transnational flows of commodities, energy, people, and data. It takes place in Ponferrada, a territory historically shaped by coal extraction and energy infrastructures, such as the Compostilla power plants—where the exhibition is held. The research examines the energy transition in a region that once powered Spain, focusing on pumped-storage hydropower as a non-extractive alternative for large-scale renewable energy storage. Based on two regional projects under development at the Bárcena reservoir and Navaleo, the research addresses a key challenge of decarbonization: the intermittency of renewable energy. By using surplus wind power to pump water into elevated reservoirs and releasing it during peak demand, energy is stored through geography itself. This approach offers an alternative to lithium-based batteries, avoiding the social and environmental costs of mineral extraction. Through images, cartographies, and models, the project visualizes how the echo of urban expansion is embedded in these vast operationalized technical landscapes. The pumped-storage plant planned for Ponferrada proposes a logic extendable across the northwestern Iberian Peninsula, pointing toward a broader storage system centered on landscape, infrastructural, and ecological design.
Curators:
Ander Bados
Miguel Ramón
Contributors:
Manuel Bouzas
Roi Salgueiro
Photographer:
Sara Cuerdo
Photographer Exhibition:
Juan Baraja, Artworks
Exhibition:
Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennial
Commissioner:
MIVAU Government of Spain, CSCAE, Arquia Foundation
