Water 4 Bits' general context is the new productive model where knowledge, technologies and innovation are becoming the main components of wealth generation. Various authors (Corsani, Boutang, Fumagalli) give the name of cognitive capitalism to this new economic, social and cultural framework. This new model induces cities such as Seville to discuss the need to become creative capitals through the promotion of the so called creative industries, which are the result of the convergence of the cultural, the scientific and the technological. Cartuja 93 technological park constitutes one of the city's main infrastructures in the field of knowledge production, on its technological, scientific, entrepreneurial and institutional sides.

However, the viability of a creative and continuously innovative social realm depends as well on the existence of a young social base that needs to be valorized and supported. It is a contrasted fact that free, informal, cooperative experimentation constitutes the necessary foundation for creativity to become a sustainable social reality. The existence of infrastructures and institutions to support this kinds of free experimentation is one of the new needs of the so called societies of knowledge and imagination.

Situation: Technopolis Cartuja 93, Europe Avenue

The building where the intervention will be taking place was built for the Universal Exhibition Sevilla 1992 as the European Economic Community pavillion. It is situated in the Island of Cartuja in Sevilla, within Cartuja 93 technological park.
It stands in the center of Europe Avenue. Its livable spaces are placed partially underground.
The pavillion forms a compositional and landscaping unity with the aforementioned avenue. It is composed itself by two main volumes:

The first of them is an evaporative cooling tower that enjoys a great visibility within Cartuja's urban landscape. The tower contains the buildings systems. It is accesible only for maintenance purposes. Its envelope is mapped with the flags of the different EEC states.

The second is a two storeys semi-underground volume. Its distribution allowed for exhibition spaces and administrative offices during the Universal Exhibition. This spaces are illuminated from above, through the base of the tower and through clerestoreys in the building perimeter. These clerestoreys are placed in the vertical surfaces of the steps in the above public plaza.

Present state of the Europe Pavillion

After the Universal Exhibition's end the building stayed closed and without use. Since then, 25 years ago, it has been the object of minor acts of vandalism. It has been flooded too. In our last visit (June 2008) it was flooded in its lower storey (floor -6 m) to a height of 43 cm. There were as well minor junk deposits, and some of the railings, glasses and doors had been broken. In the office area all systems had been dismantled.

A pesar de la falta de uso, el edificio conserva una calidad espacial y lumínica bastante extraordinaria.
Nowadays three of the four entrances to the building are walled in, being the fourth and main, on its West side, closed with a working metal rolling-shutter – the keys of which are held by the Sevilla City Hall Heritage Area.

Even having been closed for such a long time, he building keeps extraordinary spatial and luminic qualities.
Public space on Europe Ave is in an excellent state of maintenance. The fountains are operative; vegetation is in a good state, and the evaporative towers, even though not working as such, are well kept and keep their relevance as highlights in the urban landscape.

The space is used by peopl working in the area, as well a by cyclist and skaters praticularly on weekends; it is conncted to the metropolitan cycling network.

Technological context: digitalization, metaverses, OpenSim

The current phase of the digital revolution means overcoming communication network interfaces in two dimensions to three-dimensional.

OpenSim is a platform to create virtual worlds based on free software. It is able to support multiple and independent regions connected to a single centralized grid.

A region is a physical space (virtually physical), where avatars (digital characters) move and interact. A grid is the level that organized regions and places them in the world, managing things that have to exist inbetween regions, such as the user inventory.

OpenSim is a relatively new project (version 0.5.7), born as an attempt to offer a free (as in free software) alternative in a field dominated by large companies, that has a large developers community and an incredible potential future.
The development of Opensim, based on open source and supported by a significant community, can be compared to the advent of the early free web servers, that allowed anyone to own a server and to connect them through the Internet, definitely popularizing and democratizing the WWW.

In the next two years, the development of this kind of platforms, will bring 2 types of new experiences that will conform our understanding of virtual worlds.

On one hand there will be an explosion of different proposals that will allow the development of creativity and experimentation in the design of virtual worlds, redefining the experience of the Internet, and creating new business models.

On the other hand, the standardization of platforms and protocols, that will allow transversal uses and with multiple devices, as well as its organization around grids allowing for the existence of directories where information can be centralized and accessed in the way search engines do.