‘Urban DNA’ consists of a model for rapid neighbourhood intervention using the tools and perspectives provided by deliberately “minor” architecture and urban planning, as well as the recognition of certain identity patterns and the potential for neighborhood intervention.

‘Santa Eulalia DNA’ is the first episode of this journey, very useful both for defining the model itself and for illuminating its limitations and scope. It is an urban strategy model built with collective enthusiasm and with the speed of the two months in which the neighbourhood is transformed.

Following the Spanish economic depression between 2008 and 2016, many Spanish cities tend to become dilapidated, in an advanced state of precariousness. Urban centers, in particular, face a key task: to dignify, reassemble, and restore enthusiasm to citizens.

As if it were a genetic evolution, the 'Urban DNA' strategy defines this area of ​​intervention in the dilapidated post-depression city and allows it to evolve through a series of rapid, multi-scale urban acupuncture interventions. Within the overall strategy, the private 'Santa Eulalia DNA' project emerged, emerging as the first testing ground.

It took place in the Santa Eulalia neighborhood of Murcia, where dozens of urban interventions have been experimented with, from tattooing a facade with residents' memory photos on recycled urban elements to planting a row of trees at the entrance to the senior center. Each urban acupuncture intervention aims to have a low ecological footprint and promote healthy living, as many of the interventions are considered soft designs, although they are still highly transformative and have encouraged other residents to continue caring for and designing in the streets and squares.

Strategies are designed to activate urban gardens (the huertolab), vertical gardens, open-air museums, recycling of urban elements, and urban tattoos that dignify and give new uses to the city. Extremely heterogeneous designs, emphasized in areas of accumulation in critical areas of the neighborhood, rely on the recycling of urban elements, highlight institutions, and create more inclusive spaces that recover memory and activate new emotional spaces in the neighborhood.

‘Urban DNA’ is a strategy designed by architect Enrique Nieto together with urban manager Gerardo Sánchez Romero, linking the wishes of the City Council with the demands of the residents and the designs of the architects (María José Marcos Torró, Antonio Abellán Alarcón, Viviana Peña, María José Guillén Guillén, Alberto Gil Torrano, Carlos Perez, Dictinio de Castillo, Rosana Galian, Sergio Ramos, Ricardo Morcillo Pérez) who finish imagining and weaving this network of urban affections that is ‘Santa Eulalia DNA’