Environmental Sustainability and Territory in BASPcr
BASPcr integrates environmental sustainability as a territorial, material, and cultural dimension of Matiz Gallery’s exhibition programme. This line of work is not limited to reducing the gallery’s operational impact, but forms part of a broader reading of the urban conditions of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera: its materials, ways of life, social tensions, and environmental issues.
From this perspective, sustainability is not understood solely as a technical matter linked to energy consumption, waste reduction, or the digitisation of materials, but also as a question of how the territory is inhabited, what pressures affect its communities, and how art can help make visible issues that often remain outside formal cultural spaces.
With the support of
Mesa II – Encuentro Material
Matter, History and Sustainability
During Encuentro Material, the second Mesa of the BASPcr programme, the research focused on the relationship between art, matter, architecture, and sustainability. The exhibition worked with practices connected to natural materials, earth, clay, mineral pigments, manual processes, and vernacular construction techniques.
From this perspective, materiality appears not only as an artistic language, but also as a way of thinking about cultural production through durability, reuse, low impact, and territorial awareness. The exhibition opened a reflection on how contemporary artistic practices are produced, installed, documented, and communicated.
In parallel, this phase enabled the publication of the first section of the BASPcr psychogeographic study, dedicated to the history and territorial formation of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera. This section reconstructs the development of the neighbourhood from its earliest urban layers to its modern and contemporary transformations: the medieval formation of the territory, the importance of the Rec Comtal, the consolidation of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera, the partial demolition of La Ribera after 1714 for the construction of the Ciutadella, the industrialisation linked to printed cotton textile production, the transformation of the Santa Caterina Market, the opening of Via Laietana, the rehabilitation policies of Ciutat Vella, and subsequent urban interventions.
The publication of this first section allows BASPcr to be situated within a historical reading of the neighbourhood. Before addressing its current issues, the project considers it necessary to understand how the territory has been historically produced: which infrastructures have defined it, which forms of power have transformed it, and which urban processes have conditioned its social, cultural, and environmental life.
Towards Mesa III – Cuerpo y territorio
From 27 June 2026, BASPcr will open Mesa III – Cuerpo y territorio / Body and Territory, a new stage that shifts attention from the material history of the neighbourhood towards its current social, political, and environmental conditions.
Within this framework, the second section of the psychogeographic study will be published, dedicated to the current social and political reality of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera. This section will address community dynamics, neighbourhood and migrant associations, urban precarity, access to housing, institutional representation, non-formalised forms of cultural activation, and environmental issues.
One of the focuses of this new section will be atmospheric pollution in central Barcelona and its effects on the everyday life of the neighbourhood. Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera is understood here not only as a cultural and historical territory, but also as a space shaped by urban inequalities, tourist pressure, intensive mobility, lack of accessible housing, and environmental degradation.
Atmospheric Pollution and Environmental Justice
The second section of the study will incorporate a reading of atmospheric pollution as both an environmental and social issue. BASPcr understands that the effects of pollution are not distributed neutrally: they affect specific bodies, specific communities, and territories subjected to accumulated forms of urban pressure.
In this sense, environmental sustainability is connected to broader questions of urban health, housing, mobility, tourism, institutional representation, and the right to territory. The pollution affecting the neighbourhood does not appear as an isolated fact, but as part of a wider structure of urban inequality.
Mesa III will connect these issues with the exhibition Cuerpo y territorio, where body, landscape, matter, and image function as surfaces on which historical memory, human vulnerability, spirituality, and emotional forms of relation to the environment are inscribed.
Environmental Good Practices at Matiz Gallery
Alongside this dimension of research and public awareness, Matiz Gallery applies operational measures to reduce the environmental impact of its exhibition activity:
Low-consumption LED lighting in the exhibition space.
Optimisation of lighting schedules during installation, exhibitions, and public activities.
Reuse of existing structures, supports, and installation systems.
Adaptation of previous exhibition supports before producing new elements.
Reduction of printed materials through digital catalogues, online dossiers, and QR codes.
Physical production limited to adjusted print runs and on-demand materials.
Reuse of packaging whenever possible.
Waste separation during installation and dismantling.
Reduction of single-use materials in public activities.
These measures are communicated through the Matiz Gallery website, the informational materials of the BASPcr programme, the gallery’s newsletter, and its digital channels, with the aim of making the gallery’s good practices visible and fostering greater environmental awareness among the public, artists, collaborators, and cultural agents.