16 The project is based on a sort of paradox: the existing industrial structure may in the end partially, or even totally, disappear, whereas it is from that structure and its gradual fragmentation/substitution that a “multi-mixed” neighbourhood is created. Reoccupying a structure with temporary functions On the same site, the special mention team’s P.F.A.F.F. (fig.5) project starts from a very concrete idea, the re-creation of a natural ground through the removal of asphalt across 80% of the site, right up to the retained halls, to create a “green lung for the town” in place of a polluted site. Next, all the factories will be identified and classified by platform type and in terms of the qualities of their structures. The aim is to use this inventory to produce an inhabited park with a new
4 - Kaiserslautern (DE), winner - Pattern for progress > see more p.196
with an emphasis on information and communications technology in the fields of research, services, health and well-being. For the municipal officials, however, “urban vitality will need to be achieved by creating a horizontal and vertical mix of residential uses, restaurants/shops and small businesses”. Here, the municipality is not asking for maximum “conservation” of the buildings (a selection is proposed for retention), but plans to use the structure of this industrial micro-town to turn it into a genuine, forward-looking district. The winning team, in their project Pattern for progress (fig.4), proposes more a “model of growth than a static image for the future” based on the site’s capacity for appropriation by the inhabitants and potential actors; a process of
upcycling by creating values of appropriation that depend on the townsfolk. The project is content to define the minimum characteristics required to regenerate the large halls, such as access and safety, and as far as possible foster their development through adaptation at each part of the site by dividing the halls into plots, making them permeable to light and traffic. After this, it proposes “leaving the future inhabitants free to fashion their environment”. The bottom-up initiatives linked with a social economy will just need to fit into “matrices that define the suitability of certain functions and the volume of construction permitted” in order to guarantee the inclusion of the site’s public dimension. 5 - Kaiserslautern (DE), Special mention - P.F.A.F.F. > see more p.199
