froM Mono-large enclaveS to Multi-MixeD neighbourhooDS or converting urban fortreSSeS into porouS fabric

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from mono-large enclaves to multi-mixed neighbourhoods

or converting urban fortresses into porous fabric

following a century of functionalist urban design, europe’s cities have inherited large monofunctional zones originally and often deliberately designed as enclaves, “islands” of buildings, separated from the urban fabric by transport systems that cut them off and limit their access to fast motorised methods of travel.

for europan 12, a whole series of these “zones” were entered in the competition: these are large, autonomous entities characterised as “monolarge” to express both the singleness of their uses and their size. they consist partially or totally of “obsolete” wastelands, either industrial in origin like the sites at urretxu in Spain, Marly in Switzerland, groningen in the netherlands or kaiserslautern in germany, military like the heidelberg site in germany, or indeed railway sites like the one at graz in austria. these “autistic territories” are nevertheless now being overtaken by the development of the city around them and their “revitalisation” is therefore on the agenda. or else, they may be zones that are still active – such as a hospital in helsinki in finland, the Siemens headquarters in vienna in austria, or a large shopping centre in haninge in Sweden – but whose insular structure and single function make them very difficult to connect to the city, as local people would wish. the question that officials in these cities are asking competitors is: how can these territories, designed within a framework of zoning, be reintroduced into the city in the context of a new paradigm, that of a sustainable city? this means that they acquire a genuine urban dynamic no longer based on exclusive use of the car but a diversity of mobilities; that they replace monofunctionality with a plurality of uses, while retaining the traces of the past; that they introduce time as a positive value to achieve a successful transformation that allows for a degree of uncertainty about the future. and it also means reconnecting them to the surrounding areas to break their isolation, while at the same time leaving room for nature. this is a strategic objective, but also a challenge for the municipalities so that the sites gradually acquire a genuine permeability of fabric and landscape, in a context where the existing structures are at best “gated areas”, at worst “bunkers”.

the text presenting the family of sites titled “from mono-large to multi-mixed” set out the issues of this fundamental transformation: “there are two closely linked types of transformation of these territories: the metamorphosis of a large, single entity into a multitude of small elements, and that of a monofunctional zone to a mix of functions and uses. these two transformations are to a large degree the outcome of spatial and functional complexity, which is one of the essential characters of genuine urbanisation. in these transformations, a compound system of differentiated and smaller elements is relatively more flexible, more capable of adapting. if one element breaks down, it can wait for a change or replacement without affecting too large an area. if new needs emerge, they can be absorbed more evenly in the case of a differential distribution model. a highly diverse urban mix is more capable of evolving than a large, monofunctional block.”

but how did the winning teams on these sites interpret ways of introducing the combination of these two approaches – multiplicity of uses and spatial permeability – into their projects?

upcycling the existing fabric by allowing a change of uses

a first set of winning teams seeks to connect the process of transformation closely with the existing fabric by drawing on its structural logic to “recover” a part of the fabric, while gradually injecting new uses in order to avoid too sudden a change. reusing obsolete or neglected factories in a process of regeneration of uses over time: this is the approach that can be described as “urban upcycling”. in this approach, obsolete or dilapidated fabric is revitalised in order to give it additional functional value often generated by the inhabitants themselves, whereas “recycling”, by contrast, entails transforming the material recovered into a new cycle of production.

Adapting an industrial structure in order to make new programmes possible

1 - urretxu_iriMo (eS) 3 - kaiSerSlautern (De)

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textual situation in the city and the region and its qualities of industrial legacy. the question asked is: what spatial strategy could be employed to reuse empty buildings by incorporating new potential for multiple uses? the project needs to be part of a participatory process and reflect the difficult socio-economic situation, in other words to be able to meet needs that at present are largely unforeseeable… the winning team’s response in the Piztutako Irimo (fig.2) project is not architectural in the symbolic sense of the term: no profound alteration to the site’s industrial image. instead it focuses on a series of ideas and proposed actions. “it is a project of anticipation which accepts the inevitability of change, possible variations and the uncertainty of the future.” Starting with an evaluation of the site, the team proposes a catalogue of the different mechanisms for relating the new to the pre-existing. the first stage is to open up the existing spaces to allow flexible uses. this is followed by injecting the necessary services into the fabric to accommodate a wide range of uses. finally, in certain parts, the built structure is “invaded” by new additions that respect the specificities of the place. a diversity of uses is suggested for the different buildings, while the residential function combined with possible agricultural areas is added close to the town centre. What we have here is not a radical spatial upheaval, but a reinforcement of the value of what is already there by a targeted acupuncture that seeks to adapt the industrial structure to a gradual and partially random change of programmes.

re-dividing the built fabric and defining its capacity for appropriation by residents

the collapse of the industry and the need to redevelop the area by converting it to new uses make the former pfaff site at kaiserslautern in germany (fig.3) an excellent example of a large, closed enclave which requires reinsertion into the town. the Municipal council is looking for new uses for the site, such as a technology park to exploit the nearby presence of the campus,

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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. 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

6 - urretxu_iriMo (eS)

concept of housing for students and researchers linked to the nearby university, and a gradual appropriation of the place through the definition of temporary forms of occupancy. this entails architectural work on the housing, composed of wooden microstructures linked to the macro scale halls, and on the service functions (cafes, restaurants, kitchens, computer rooms).

Multifunctional reconnections by means of urban lines

the second common approach shared by several winning teams consists in “excavating” new urban axes within the thickness of the sites. these have the effect of opening up the fabric present and/or created on major public spaces, remodelling mobilities and playing a linking role between entities. at the same time, however, through their positioning, these urban lines create vital re-connections between the new district and the surrounding city, breaking down its isolation.

creating a street around which urban programmes cluster

on the urretxu site (eS) (fig.6), the runner-up team’s project Tempos of colonization (fig.7) proposes “new ideas about the way in which public spaces can accommodate not only a certain specific use (work, commercial, cultural and housing...), but at (almost) the same time any function at different moments and with minimal effort” in order to “fashion the social city”. the project therefore opts “for the creation of a civic backbone extending through a sequence of exterior, roofed and interior voids where activity appropriates the vacant spaces”. this succession of continuous voids gives rise to a genuine street linking the four districts. along this porous and winding axis, in the mass of the industrial fabric, activities of the most urban kind will be grouped. this itinerary becomes the major communal social space, “connecting inhabitants and users a high-quality environment, with an “urban village” character, and to contribute to the regeneration of the northern entry to the town. the competitors were asked “to work on growing density by a balanced ratio of volumes between built structures and public and semipublic spaces, in order to enhance the vitality of the site and its link with the adjacent zones”.

versatile and adaptable zones which people will appropriate to work and adapt to the needs of the moment”.

connecting a barracks to its urban environment via a new axis

the site proposed by the city of heidelberg (De) (fig.8) is a barracks soon to be vacated by the resident uS army. it constitutes an obstacle to urban growth because it prevents the creation of a link between the surrounding areas and the town’s urban development to the south. With the departure of the army, 200 hectares will soon be released – “twice the size of the old town of heidelberg or equal to the total area of land developed in the last 25 years” – for new uses. With no connection to the surrounding urban area, this enclave becomes a very significant urban planning priority. the winning project, Startband (fig.9), proposes to create a strong new north-south axis, with qualities of open linear space. it will link the future neighbourhoods created on the site with the city and the landscape. conceived as the starting point for transformation, it triggers the process of future redevelopment of the site through the emergence of several projects which can take root there over time. it is a flexible development, including the reuse of existing buildings to provide new residential spaces. it also establishes a link between old and modern. Startband is a strategy for the appropriation of the barracks which seeks to “integrate the site into the fabric of urban complexity and foster the development of an independent identity” for the new district. its characteristics would be to offer differential and multifunctional spaces, a flexible mix of typologies, and a variety of options for ways of using the space.

connecting a new district to its area by a park

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7 - urretxu_iriMo (eS), runner-up - teMpoS of colonization > See More p.212

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in their project, Le parc des falaises (fig.11), the winning team used this green light for a radical transformation of the wasteland by creating a central linear public space which structures the development and fosters a combination of activities. this line takes the form of an ecological park “framed by a series of towers that defines the outline of the entry to Marly and by a “gardencity” strip composed of parallel blocks and row housing”. the park also acts as a vector for the connection of the new neighbourhood to the cantonal road and to a wider network of green spaces, creating links with the whole surrounding urban and landscape fabric. and although most of the buildings are demolished, the traces of the former industrial plot layout are retained, delineating the new streets “by allowing various scenarios of gradual/adaptive implementation leading to a new, more coherent neighbourhood structure”. in addition to the

8 - heiDelberg (De) 10 - Marly (ch)

housing block typologies, the project includes sports facilities, a multipurpose hall and student housing.

structuring with landscape strips of programmatic aggregates

in vienna in austria (fig.12), the creation of new roads is also proposed as a solution. While the site where Siemens settled in the early 20th century is typical of an industrial structure, its workplaces are not obsolete, because in the last 15 years it has evolved to accommodate programmes that relate less to production and more to research and services. the closing of workshops has left land free on the edges of the site, while new neighbourhoods have developed around. this is an opportunity for vienna municipality to overcome the separation between workplaces and places of urban life, “seeking to transform the whole site into a mixed use urban area”. the winning team’s project, Cluster / Streetscape (fig.13), introduces landscape strips at several points on the site as a discontinuous but transformative series of public axes. it is “a strategy for the creation of a new structure and identity” in what was previously a patchwork of buildings. and the development included along these strips takes place “without too many restrictions”. the axes are clearly defined as a starting point for urbanisation, as a park concept, able to accommodate a whole diversity of typologies with mixed uses based around the cluster, and illustrating the adaptability of the project over time.

11 - Marly (ch), Winner - le parc DeS falaiSeS > See More p.202

urbanising a hospital around a health street

the helsinki site in finland (fig.14) has the typical form of the “hospital island” located within the city and of a large landscaped entity composed of a sequence of park, forest and lake. the objective of the competition was to explore the site’s potential for development by combining

14 - Helsinki (Fi) 15 - Helsinki (Fi), Winner - Asclepeion > see more p.188

13 - Wien-siemensäcker (AT), Winner - clusTer / sTreeTscApe > see more p.218

the hospital functions with new services, housing and different care centres. the main challenge is to link the area to the surrounding urban structure in order to “remove the physical and mental barrier around the hospital”. a major urban test! the winning team’s aim with its Asclepeion project (fig.15) is to improve access to the site by opening it up, but also by working on its visibility. to create this permeability, a new street called “health street” penetrates into the hospital zone and creates a major axis linking the existing to future buildings. More widely open to the exceptional landscape environment around it, the hospital zone is transformed into a mixed urban neighbourhood. “this mix of functions includes new housing concepts for older people and spaces for people with mental disabilities.” the project generates spatial complexity and a flexible and adaptable urban structure.

colonising the mono-large with the micro-mixed

breaking up the singularity of structures on isolated sites is the third common approach adopted by several winning team. Whether applied to sites conceived as blocks to be broken up and revitalised, or to industrial zones lacking urban qualities, the aim is to produce a new, smaller scale urban fabric open to a multiplicity of uses, but also to propose new systems of active urban grounding. these projects share the idea of an urban economy not entirely dominated by megastores or large, land-hungry businesses, by seeking to reintroduce a microscale that releases a diversity of initiatives. nonetheless, these approaches do not ignore the need to produce public spaces and regulated urban life for the common good. it is this dual requirement that the teams propose to fulfil through their projects.

superimposing micro-urban fabric on a commercial macro-plinth

haninge (fig.16) is a Swedish town located 20 minutes by train from Stockholm. it is a fastgrowing place, but the town centre suffers from urbanism based on large-scale zoning with priority assigned to the car. all town centre life is concentrated in a big shopping mall which constitutes the competition site. open only during the day, deserted and unsafe at night, the structure forces people to take alternative routes around it. today, citizens and politicians want “an urban fabric that attracts pedestrians and cyclists rather than cars”. for the municipality, the goal is to create an urban centre in haninge with new public spaces and housing, but also small street level spaces for shops and small businesses. the winning team’s response with its project Parklife (fig.17), is to work vertically on two scales: the large scale of the old town centre blocks remodelled to structure the active lower town, and the smaller scale to create a fabric of fragmented buildings above this plinth. the aim is to invent a hybrid and porous urban concept that will be “flexible and dynamic in terms of properties, typologies, scales, activities and social structures”. the challenge is to create an intense 24/7 town with a diversity of uses. the difficult question of parking is handled by integrating it into the structures with the other programmes, but set back from the street. the proposed system is conceived to lead to the creation of a sustainable economy based on urban social relations.

16 - HAninge (se)

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producing a multiple built fabric on urban platforms

on the Siemensäcker site in vienna (at), where the challenge is to transform a business zone into a mixed urban neighbourhood, the runnerup team’s project Urban software (fig.18) also takes a scalar approach. they propose infiltrating the zones around the nucleus of large office blocks with a multiplicity of buildings with strong contextual properties in order to create a porous city. they introduce three instruments to resolve the different problems: the design of supports, flexible platforms that are broken down into a syntax that describes the production of the urban fabric in small entities, without defining the result, and urban management of the supports. employing these tools appropriately in the three situations identified (an urban void awaiting occupancy, a tertiary fabric and an obsolete former factory), the project takes the form of a strategic manual, a tool with the capacity to generate urban diversity and dynamics. however, the ultimate form will emerge from

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19 - Helsinki (Fi)

18 - Wien-siemensäcker (AT), runner-up - urbAn soFTWAre > see more p.220

a participatory process, “a negotiation between the different actors involved in choices about the production of the city”.

triggering a new urban process starting from nature

by contrast with certain approaches primarily based on the adaptability of the built fabric to accommodate new uses, or on the creation of new porous typologies, one group of projects concentrates more on nature and its rhythms to introduce new attractiveness, while expressing a readiness to introduce processes of resilience into urbanised areas for industry or large infrastructures. in certain cases, they use the surrounding natural features – such as water – to restore a natural dimension to the site. in others, they generate a new productive landscape where nature acts as a driving force and attractor in a very short time, while leaving the possibility for urban processes to be established in the longer term. What we see here is the emergence of a new alliance between city and nature.

Making water the driving force of urban transformation

Starting with the fact that the hospital site in helsinki (fi) (fig.19) is situated between two natural entities – sea and forest – the proposal in the runner-up project Water shuttle (fig.20) uses water to break the hospital’s urban isolation. for the team in question, “water is a perfect symbol of life and health. the water system is situated within the space of the built fabric, which can use freshwater and remain clean, while recycling water through a recycling system. outside, the rainwater recovery system, with retention tanks, covers the entire site.” and even the different typologies “draw their inspiration from water in its different forms: flowing water, ice and steam.” the project also introduces metropolitan amenities such as the nature park. this use of water, which could be nothing more than a seductive pretext, is in fact conceived as a tool for reconnecting the health programmes and the more urban programmes introduced on the site, but also supporting urban connections with the park and the southern district.

playing on the rhythms between artificiality and nature

the graz site in austria (fig.21) is a marginal area characterised by its industry and isolated by the presence of the railway on its boundary. however, it is now completely surrounded by urban structures that include a new population with new ways of life and economic dynamics, but also new demands for urban quality in the surroundings. the municipality’s objective is to produce “a smart city”, but one whose design “involves the inhabitants with information and participation and a forum of interdisciplinary experts to coordinate and adjust future urban developments.” the design of the winning team’s project, Polyrhythmic fields (fig.22), is based on the creation of a new landscape in the form of a chequerboard, where each field takes on a different rhythm reflecting the way it is used by its inhabit-

21 - graz (at) 23 - groningen (nl)

20 - Helsinki (Fi), runner-up - WATer sHuTTle > see more p.190

ants. the neutrality of these “polyrhythmic fields” generates great flexibility of occupation and the squares can be occupied alternatively by sports fields, parks or playgrounds, with temporal variability and urban rhythms. at the urban scale, energy and environmental efficiency is introduced by rooftop gardens and greenhouses, local food production… here, the artificiality of the chequerboard with its flexibility of uses is counterbalanced by the strong presence of nature, which provides the quality of both the public spaces and of the links between the surrounding neighbourhoods.

starting an urban cycle by creating a productive landscape

groningen in the netherlands (fig.23), the big southern Suikerunie post-industrial site, is seen as a strategic reserve to be developed over a period of some 20 years, but through bottomup initiatives, a testing ground for new ways of using industrial wastelands. although dividing the site in half, hoendiepkanaal canal also represents significant potential based on water. and although the municipality ultimately intends to create a business park, it wants to begin now with a staged approach and temporary occupations. the winning project, deliberately titled Prelude (fig.24), treats the site “as an open field where landscape and city meet”. it is seen as a strategy for the first stage in a gradual spatial and social process which begins by linking the site to the urban fabric by a bridge and road, without creating other constructions. given the uncertainties regarding future changes to the place, the proposal is to transform the site into a productive park by planting miscanthus, which can be harvested and reused as “green concrete” in the construction of the bridge. this approach can also constitute an experiment in strong citizen involvement and therefore act as an attractor. the idea is to trigger “an adaptable form for a new urban use”. here, nature is employed as a way to enhance a territory on the urban fringe and activate it as an attractive park area linked to the city. by changing the image of the industrial location into a landscaped space around water, the project shows that with limited means it is possible both to trigger an urban operation and also to achieve resilience.

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22 - graz (at), runner-up - polyrhythMic fielDS > See More p.163