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Theme 2 — C Dynamizing Landscapes
Theme 2 — C
Dynamizing Landscapes
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These sites present a potential to develop a landscape which strongly animates new developments, giving them qualities in the sense of creating a living milieu, integrating rich biodiversity in the realm of public spaces. Grenoble (FR) 148 Pont-Aven (FR) 152
SCALE — XL/S TERRITORIAL / ARCHITECTURAL LOCATION — GRENOBLE - ISÈRE (38) POPULATION — CITY 158,454 INHAB.; GRENOBLE-ALPES METROPOLIS 443,123 INHAB. STRATEGIC SITE — 432 HA / PROJECT SITE — 25 HA SITE PROPOSED BY — CITY OF GRENOBLE ACTOR(S) INVOLVED — CITY OF GRENOBLE, CITY OF LA TRONCHE, CITY OF SAINT-MARTIN-LE-VINOUX, GRENOBLE-ALPES METROPOLIS, DEPARTMENTAL COUNCIL OF ISÈRE, CROUS, REGION AUVERGNE RHÔNE-ALPES, CHARTREUSE REGIONAL NATURE PARK AND URBAN AGENCY OF THE GRENOBLOISE REGION OWNER(S) OF THE SITE — CITY OF GRENOBLE AND THE FRENCH STATE
JULIE GAUTHIER — Project Director of The Bastille, City of Grenoble
1/ What are the main questions asked to the competitors for the transformation of the site? Among the main questions asked for this site, that of the future identity of the Bastille site in general and of its intermediary stratum of Rabot in particular is central. The projects had to find original ways of reconciling, articulating or taking part in the dualities that characterise this site (protected area/populated area, sanctuary area/experimental area, etc.) and particularly urban area/ mountain area. Through these questions, the Bastille presents itself as a unique place to experience our relationship with the living, but also to observe and study the global changes in our society.
2/ How is the site linked to the two subtopics of “metabolism” and “inclusivity”? Because of its geographical position, at the gateway to the Chartreuse Regional Nature Park, and because of its richness in terms of fauna (more than 200 species recorded), flora (more than 500 plant species recorded) and heritage, the Bastille is an incredible place to live and can be considered as a lookout for current climatic and environmental issues. Through perception through sensitivity, understanding through measurement, action through experimentation, questioning through creativity and sharing through discussion, the Bastille site invites us to think together about the architectural, urban and territorial project and the design of a new society.
3/ Have you already defined a specific process for the territorial and/or urban and/or architectural development of the site after the Europan competition? Do you expect a proposal of process from the competitors linked to what they proposed in their prize-winning projects? The three teams selected offer different and complementary views of the site. This diversity of vision brings creative ideas for the intermediate terrace of the Bastille. Also, we would like to get the three teams to work together to define a short-term programme (which initial actions should be transitory) and a long-term programme (what urban narrative should be developed for this site). Now it is a question of entering a feasibility phase to transform the visionary ideas proposed into concrete projects with their economic model, and with the bearers of these projects. Because this site already brings together many actors, particularly institutional ones, and represents an emblematic site for the inhabitants, the process of reflection and action to be set in motion is essential for the success of the project. We also expect the teams selected for Europan to be creative in the way they carry out the project.
ALICE RIEGERT (FR), MARGUERITE CHARLES (FR) FLORIANT BONNY (FR), MAXIME BARDOU (FR) GASPARD BÉGUÉ (FR), LANDSCAPERS CYNTHIA BONNEFILLE (FR), ARCHITECT 15 RUE CLAUDIUS LINOSSIER 69004 LYON (FR) +33 673989723 LABO.RABO.GRENOBLE@GMAIL.COM
LABO RABO
Team point of view — Grenoble is a region fully affected by climate change, with increasingly frequent heat waves and a growing scarcity of water resources. The Rabot, a key figure in the construction of the city since its inception, has an important role to play in facing the climate challenge collectively. Driven by a scientific and practical approach, the transformation of the city-mountain into a laboratory influences the everyday landscape of the city-plain with concrete solutions for the quality of urban life. The laboratory takes care of both the existing and traces of the past. Thus, vacant buildings, hardened soils, inert waste or wooded wastelands become inexhaustible resources to change our ways of conceiving the city.
Jury point of view — The jury praised the programmatic strength of the project, which quite clearly reflects the priorities of the site and of the city. The idea of a laboratory as a tool for the observation of the living world and climate change, of collaboration and space management, echoes Grenoble’s scientific culture. The project was judged to be well-rounded, although modest in architectural terms. The team cleverly demonstrates the tension between the mountains and the city centre. The staging of the topology and the views accords well with the tradition of Alpine geography.
The metabolism
TOM BARBIER (FR) JEAN-BENOÎT BOCCAREN (FR) PAUL RIFFAULT (FR) ARCHITECTS 11 VILLA DU DOCTEUR LOUIS GEORGES SERRE 94300 VINCENNES (FR) +33 616537687 EQUIPE@REFUGEURBAIN.FR / WWW.REFUGEURBAIN.FR
The Urban Refuge
Team point of view — Grenoble, located between city and mountain, is a privileged place where to develop symbiotic uses between nature and city. To become an urban refuge, the Rabot must be crossed to reconnect with the city and its geography. Like a round road, the walls become the new links that connect the valley to the Bastille. Acting as a protection, they turn the Rabot into a nature sanctuary on the mountain. Thanks to the side roads, the Rabot becomes central and is at the crossroads. Refuge of passage or stopover, refuge of events, the Rabot becomes the framework in which everyone can organize, participate, or simply enjoy cultural events, artistic installations, awareness or scientific discovery.
Jury point of view — By employing lightweight architectural systems, the project helps to highlight the legacy of walls and buttresses in a new and practical way. By working on the idea of walking and contemplation, it offers “an experience that is both frugal and spectacular” in the surveying of an exceptional site. The jury emphasised the clarity and strength of the team’s idea: to give bodies the possibility of walking along and on the walls.
LUC DOIN (FR) ARCHITECT MARIE LUDMANN (FR) ARCHITECT-ENGINEER HÉLÈNE COUSSEDIÈRE (FR) ARCHITECT INÈS HUBERT (FR) LANDSCAPER ATELIER BRUMAIRE, LYON (FR) +33 624451963 HELLO@ATELIERBRUMAIRE.COM WWW.ATELIERBRUMAIRE.COM
Arc des Vivants
Team point of view — On the edge between the plain and the mountains, the Arc des Vivants redesigns the intermediate layer of the Bastille. This strategic relay for fauna and flora is reinforced by an alternative management scheme for water, absorbing natural hazards and irrigating cultivated areas. The project opens-up the Micropole, resulting from the mutation of the Rabot’s vacant buildings, and becomes a laboratory and observatory for culture and nature. Its transformation is punctuated by arts and science residences, events, or the hosting of activities without predetermination, allowing a measured and progressive evolution. In the long-term, the elements identified at the Bastille are found in the Grenoble area as possible resonances, transforming the old, fortified belt into a network of climate watch points.
SCALE — L/S URBAN + ARCHITECTURAL / ARCHITECTURAL LOCATION — PONT-AVEN – FINISTÈRE (29) POPULATION — 2801 INHAB. PROJECT SITE — 3 HA SITE PROPOSED BY — CITY OF PONT-AVEN, CONCARNEAU CORNOUAILLE AGGLOMERATION ACTOR(S) INVOLVED — CITY OF PONT-AVEN, CONCARNEAU CORNOUAILLE AGGLOMERATION, ETABLISSEMENT PUBLIC FONCIER DE BRETAGNE OWNER(S) OF THE SITE — PRIVATE OWNER
CHRISTIAN DAUTEL — Mayor of Pont-Aven
1/ What are the main questions asked to the competitors for the transformation of the site? When the competition was launched, the following questions were asked to the teams: — Why did you choose the Belle Angèle site? — In what way does this site raise the question of the triple injunction assigned to contemporary urban development: ecology / economy (resources and value creation) / way of living? — How can the scale and impact of such a project on the immediate and distant territory be assessed? — How can we consider a new welcoming landscape for this site, what urban form and what project dynamics should be implemented?
2/ How is the site linked to the two subtopics of “metabolism” and “inclusivity”? The aim of revitalising the industrial wasteland is to influence the town of Pont-Aven in terms of its local economic development and its urban development through its river. This process is based on the concept of social, environmental and symbolic inclusion. The concept of metabolism refers to the transformation expected to redefine the scales of the city and the physical links to the territory.
3/ Have you already defined a specific process for the territorial and/or urban and/or architectural development of the site after the Europan competition? Do you expect a proposal of process from the competitors linked to what they proposed in their prize-winning projects? At the end of the competition, the municipality brought together the two winning teams and the runner-up team selected by the jury during a study and debate session organised at the Pont-Aven Museum. The main institutions that support the town of Pont-Aven in this project were invited to participate as well as the representatives of the associations. It was agreed to pursue a collective approach with the three award-winning teams by entrusting them with a mission based on their proposals, by setting programmatic, urban, landscape and environmental objectives in collaboration with the site’s stakeholders and inhabitants. This initial work should lead to the proposal of spaces available for operations to restore the landscape, build housing, productive activities and the development of public spaces (re-natured). Each team may also be called upon to conduct a specific operation.
VICTOIRE COIZY (FR), ARCHITECTE, URBANIST LÉA MELLET (FR), URBANIST CHLOÉ MONCHALIN (FR), ARCHITECT WILLIAM ROTH (FR), LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT CHLOÉ MONCHALIN 73 RUE DES VIGNOLES, 75020 PARIS (FR) +33 628275625 CHLOE.MONCHALIN@HOTMAIL.FR
Beatmatching
Team point of view — As an entry point to Pont-Aven, “Belle Angèle” is an industrial wasteland located between rurality, urbanity and river: a convergence point of living temporalities. Grounded on their mutual synchronisations, our project supports a new way of inhabiting its territory, balancing humans’ rhythms and natural cycles. Tools for this mutation include revitalization and reemployment. The resources needed for this renewal come from its surroundings and Aven’s territory. Different types of uses on the same territory will allow this new neighbourhood to work in synergy. Time and spaces match to offer Pont-Aven a global approach and a continuous evolution. Beatmatching composes the backbone of its reversibility in time, aiming to orchestrate times, rhythms and cycles into a new Pont-Aven’s lifestyle.
Jury point of view — The jury stressed the originality and relevance of the territorial approach and theoretical stance taken by the team on life rhythms and life cycles, in resonance with the theme of Living Cities. The project, which includes seasonal housing, is based on inventive space-time programming and deals very well with the question of uses and the coexistence of activities by revealing a potential for varied kinds of occupancies. The project appears complete and very coherent at all scales.
CLÉMENCE ESTRADA (FR) PATXI GARDERA (FR) NICOLAS MATRANGA (FR) ROMÉO SANSÉAU (FR) ARCHITECTS, URBANISTS FORMALOCAL + CLÉMENCE ESTRADA 31 BIS RUE FESSART, 75019 PARIS (FR) +33 953515172 / +33 668721565 ATELIER@FORMALOCAL.COM WWW.FORMALOCAL.COM
Magnétisme Salin
Team point of view — 1 ria, 1 lighthouse, 3 landmarks, 8 coves, 5 ports, 9 bridges, 14 mills, 3 species of migratory fish, 15 farms and 7 sleeping wash houses. The industrial wasteland of the Belle Angèle is an opportunity to initiate a pioneering transformation by revitalizing all the local resources already present: ecosystem, built heritage, urban values, local initiatives, and historical effervescence. The town of Pont-Aven has decided to engage in a process of environmental, cultural and engineering innovation fed by its territory. The project proposes to transform the Belle Angèle wasteland into a reinvented hamlet, in osmosis with the Aven and its landscape. It reinterprets this local tradition of the hamlet by a new urban and social organization gathering houses around four founding places: a central square, a “School of Currents”, a plant nursery and a material recycling hall.
Jury point of view —This proposal stood out in particular for the strength of the territorial argument and the inclusion of the four types of milieus found by the team at territorial scale (productive, aquatic, vegetal, inhabited) to identify project locations between the river and the sea. The project possesses a poetic dimension anchored in the history and memory of Pont-Aven, with a clever reinterpretation of the imaginative associations evoked by windmills. The programming is open to experiment and appears rich and credible. The project demonstrates great coherence.
The school, the greenhouse and the climate Machine-Mills The alley and its farmhouses
ROMAN JOLIY (FR) ALICE CECCHINI (IT) ARCHITECTS ATELIER POEM, SANT ANGELO IN VADO (IT) +33 689333644 CONTACT@ATELIER-POEM.COM WWW.ATELIER-POEM.COM
Invisibility of the Visible
Team point of view — The project consists of a strategy of urban and architectural regeneration that, starting from the operational perimeter of the former industrial site “Belle Angèle”, develops a path of sustainability in support of the city of Pont-Aven and extending to the whole territory. The idea is to consider the project area as an “agent” that can facilitate the triggering of urban processes of circularity and not merely as a “context” to be retrained. The system, based on the theme Living Cities, offers concrete opportunities to improve the efficiency of natural resources and reduce environmental impacts. The definition of matter and energy flows allows a flexible and functional use of “des milieux”.
Jury point of view — The jury stressed the high architectural quality of this project. Complementary to more territorial and strategic approaches, this proposal has the virtue of revealing the sensory qualities of the site through the materiality of the architecture. The response to the session theme is expressed in particular in the relationship between architecture and natural elements (water, air, plant life, soil…).
Schwäbisch Gmünd (DE)
SCALE — XL/L TERRITORIAL / URBAN + ARCHITECTURAL LOCATION — CITY OF SCHWÄBISCH GMÜND, BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG POPULATION — 61,000 INHAB. STRATEGIC SITE — 138 HA / PROJECT SITE — 27 HA SITE PROPOSED BY — CITY OF SCHWÄBISCH GMÜND ACTOR(S) INVOLVED — CITY OF SCHWÄBISCH GMÜND OWNER(S) OF THE SITE — CITY OF SCHWÄBISCH GMÜND, PRIVATE OWNERS, INVESTORS
ANNE-MARIE MOSSES — Department of Urban Renewal and Historic Preservation of the Office of Urban Development
1/ What are the main questions asked to the competitors for the transformation of the site? The main task was to design a new, inviting entrance to the city from the west, a new urban “gateway” into the city. An area that has been so far characterized by fallow land and heterogeneous and underused commercial areas is to be transformed into a lively, sustainable neighbourhood, while developing a long-term perspective, with regard to mobility change and taking social, cultural, ecological and economic concerns into account.
2/ How is the site linked to the two subtopics of “metabolism” and “inclusivity”? Today, the area is dominated by the automotive industry. A transformation of uses is therefore necessary, taking into account longterm stable economic, social and environmental aspects. The goal is a lively, organic urban space that can react more resiliently to economic and social changes in the long-term. Residents and entrepreneurs identify strongly with the neighbourhood. There are great fears of changes, planning related as well as social and economic ones. It is therefore crucial to manage the transformation process both carefully and actively, with the involvement of residents, and to create well-usable, lively public urban spaces that promote communication.
3/ Have you already defined a specific process for the territorial and/or urban and/or architectural development of the site after the Europan competition? Do you expect a proposal of process from the competitors linked to what they proposed in their prize-winning projects? The preparatory examinations required to define an official urban redevelopment area and the acquisition of funding have already begun. This planning instrument offers the chance of an active involvement of the citizens, a more active control of the property-relevant processes and enables funding as well as a rapid implementation. As a next step, we intend to continue the process in cooperation with the awarded teams in the form of workshops involving the relevant actors and stakeholders with the aim of developing a framework plan that can be implemented gradually. The winning team will presumably receive a moderating and planning task for this purpose while further developing the ideas formulated in the competition.
TOM MACHT (DE), FALK JÄHNIG (DE) SIMONA ROŠER (SI), ARCHITECTS KRISS EDOUARD GABRIEL (BE) LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT TOM MACHT, DRESDEN (DE) +49 15152264497 TOM.MACHT@GMX.NET
Viriditas ante portas
Team point of view — A new gate for Schwäbisch Gmünd A green wall of trees breached by a widely visible tower symbolically marks the new western entrance to Schwäbisch Gmünd and serves, together with the following square and the green space in front of it, as the middle of a new, lively, mixed quarter that builds upon the site’s potentials. The connection of existing green spaces and the qualification of the river Rems and Mühlbach stream create vast spaces for recreation, events and urban agriculture. Using the building’s rooftops for green houses, gardening and energy production and combining them with manufactories, the neighbourhood becomes a productive element of the local economy and, by providing new locations along the river, also becomes part of the town’s cultural landscape.
Jury point of view — The jury appreciates the concept of the Green Belt in several respects. It links the area to the open space and the superordinate path connections, structures the area into different zones and at the same time represents the transition to the city. The handling of the existing buildings, the small-scale development and the variety of building typologies allow for a flexible and practicable realization in building phases.
MARCEL TROEGER (DE) LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, URBANIST MICHAEL FAY (DE) ARCHITECT, URBANIST STUDIO ERDE & FAY ARCHITECTURE, BERLIN (DE) +49 17620792563 MARCELTROEGER@GMAIL.COM MARCELTROEGER.COM
Gmünder Talfinger & the Rems Valley Metropolis
Team point of view — Can we read Schwäbisch Gmünd as part of a unique horizontal landscape metropolis? The authors develop a project, which thinks from the valley: how can the western city entrance be transformed into a resilient (landscape) network, which is interwoven with the valley, its history, geology, infrastructures and landscapes? The proposed Gmünder Talfinger thus communicate actively with the region and create strong architectural and landscape hybrids, which demonstrate a new kind of rural urbanity and the celebration of metabolic interactions with the valley metropolis. The Rems Allmende and the Lorcher Höfe as circular & self-sufficient typologies revive the city entrance of SG and reconnect back into the valley by their hybrid infrastructures and the loaded and interwoven landscape lines.
Jury point of view — The design works with buildings and structures in different grains and dimensions. This allows a variety of different uses and a sensitive treatment of the existing buildings. The hanging gardens are appreciated as a contribution to the three-dimensional design of the open spaces as well as integration of ecological aspects. In addition, other ecological aspects, such as rainwater management or the opening of the spoliated millstream are pointed out.
HUYEN TRANG DAO (DE) YOUNG EUN HA (KR) MAI QUYNH LAI (DE) ARCHITECTS HUYEN TRANG DAO OFFENBACH AM MAIN (DE) +49 15906333610 DAO.HUYENTRANG93@YAHOO.DE
RISE
Team point of view — RISE: Resilient, Innovative, Social and Energetical. The design develops Schwäbisch Gmünd‘s western entrance into a neighbourhood that meets the challenges of climate change and illustrates how people can live and work in the future. Four sub-districts are being created in phases: the centre of the quarter with Einhornplatz, the handcraft yard, the innovation centre and the courtyard. RISE purposely mixes residential, service & commercial, retail, culture & education to create an urban diversity. The topics are implemented in the building structure and the open space in a character-forming and identity-creating way. Through the conceptual integration of an innovative Integrated Water and Resource Management, RISE takes on a leading role in sustainable and climate-friendly urban development.
3.
Care
Care is about recognizing the vulnerability of our living milieu. It is about finding new design ways to pay attention to marginalized, hurt, or ignored areas and help to repair them.
ANALYSIS ARTICLE BY SOCRATES STRATIS (CY) — PHD ARCHITECT, URBANIST; ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DPT. OF ARCHITECTURE, UNIV. OF CYPRUS. CO-FOUNDER OF AA & U. WWW.AAPLUSU.COM; WWW.SOCRATESTRATIS.COM
Feeling Overwhelmed “Imagine a beach —you within it, or better watching from above— the burning sun, sunscreen and bright bathing suits… Then a chorus of songs: everyday songs, songs of worry and of boredom, songs of almost nothing. And below them: the slow creaking of an exhausted Earth, a gasp”1 . In 2019, the Lithuanian contribution to the Venice Biennale of Art, the Sun & Sea opera performance, took place on an artificial beach in Marina Militare2 (fig.1). An allegorical gesture to make visible the inability of humanity to react to the devastating impact of climate change on an “exhausted Earth”. Feeling overwhelmed is a frequent reaction of contemporary human society when faced with the catastrophic consequences of the Anthropocene. Sun & Sea shows us the agency of visual and performative arts in anchoring an abstract ecumenical threat to a specific action. It offers us alternative ways to make our incapacitated behaviours visible while Earth is being “exhausted”. Feeling overwhelmed is a threat for the collective human institutions, whose means of responding may seem too little, and ineffective. The small and medium-size European cities that participate in Europan are not an exception. Their means may be inadequate to act solely, vis-à-vis territorial transformations caused by natural phenomena. Continuing business as usual may become their “artificial beach” where “below them: the slow cracking of an exhausted Earth, a gasp”. The introduction of the concept of Care as one of the sub-themes of the Europan 16th session on Living Cities has encouraged the Europan network to bring on the frontline such risk of feeling overwhelmed when confronted with territorial transformations. One of the challenges of Europan’s 16th session is to offer means to overcome the risky deadlock of continuing-business-as-usual by its faithful partners, those of the local authorities and the young urban practitioners.
About Care
Care is about maintaining, repairing, fixing an interweaved, complex life-sustaining web that “includes our bodies, ourselves, our environment”3. Care asks for a paradigm shift. It is about moving away from growth, progress and novelty as the starting points of putting in relation to society and technology. It involves extra attention to breakdown, erosion and decay by rethinking repair, without romanticizing it4. Critical care, further on, involves exposing the “care-washing” approaches of the neoliberal sociotechnical paradigm that exploits all genres of self-care and builds its expansion on the caregiving precarious working forces. Critical care involves the understanding of the complex power relations behind the urban and ecological maintenance5 that the Europan 16 Living Cities theme asks for. Yet before implementing a paradigm shift from growth to repair, we first need to enact a big enough public stage that fosters democratic practices for such change6. What a more pertinent platform than that of Europan to address such a challenge!
Caring for Natural Elements and Landscapes
What does the Europan 16 theme —Living Cities— invite us to care for in regards to “geographic territorial entities”7? I argue that by reinforcing the modality of “territoriality”, the Europan 16 project may entangle the physical values of the dominating architectural project for the city, with those of urban and landscape approaches. By taking a “territorial turn”8, the Europan 16 project may navigate across scales of maintenance9. In other words, it will support collective social practices that evolve around the maintenance, repair and care of our life support environment. The study of the sites’ briefs and the winning projects in respect to the cities of Carouge, Switzerland, Hjertelia, Norway, Karlskoga, Sweden, Niort, France, (part of the sub-theme Care: re-valorising natural elements and landscapes) helps us to establish an initial understanding of the above-mentioned challenges vis-à-vis the territorial turn of the Europan project. The four sites’ briefs come from different urban cultures and material urban practices. Yet, they have similar concerns to repairing a broken planet. At first glance, we see that two of the sites’ briefs are about urban repair where the other two are about urban growth. Is that so?
2 — Karlskoga (SE), winner — Embrace Karlskoga > See more P.187
In Carouge, the Fontenette riparian area is invited to take a protagonist role in the contemporary everydayness where in Niort the project’s site coincides with the city’s agglomeration urgent need for strategic planning to confront climate change consequences on natural phenomena such as flooding as well as prolonged arid periods. On the other hand, a new neighbourhood in Karlskoga is to be located by a train-station-to-be of a new line connecting Oslo with Stockholm. A prototype neighbourhood for living and farming is to be located at Hjertelia’s periphery while waiting for the new train arrival from Oslo to Honefoss. Through the two Scandinavian sites we understand that rather often, regional planning policies that promote public rail mobility for carbon footprint reduction manifest themselves in projects of growth. In this case, it is about the new rail lines putting Karslkoga and Hjertelia on a regional map of public rail transport. The E16 theme has invited the project actors to formulate proposals that mediate between metabolic and inclusive vitalities. I argue that caring for “geographic territorial entities” involves a two-faceted mediation. The first genre of mediation involves the support for new publics, whereas the second one is about translating the transformative power of the geographic entities of nature into the project’s modalities.
Supporting New Publics
The winning projects offer spatial, programmatic and actorial means to encourage the entanglement of humans and non-humans
into the new publics. The metabolic processes of the territorial geographic entities, present in the projects’ sites, are part of the agents that constitute the new publics. More precisely, “vectors of resilience and carriers of regeneration dynamics”, according to the authors of the Mutual Valley project in Niort, are equal partners to the new publics. They come from territorial geographic entities and their ecological functionalities such as the river Arve in Carouge, the lake Möckeln in Karlskoga, the urban forest Fontennette in Carouge and in Niort, the “Sèvre river tributaries upstream and the wet marsh of the Marais poitevin downstream”10 . Caring for territorial geographic Support collective social entities involves a process of turning them into legal entities that are practices that evolve equally represented in any discussion regarding their future. Such legal around the maintenance, entities may encourage alliances, synergies across governance scales. repair and care of our life They will help the local authorities to overcome the risks of being support environment overwhelmed, of remaining stuck on their “artificial beach”. The Embrace Karlskoga project invests in the qualities of the lake Möckeln. By proposing a soft mobility recreational loop along its public shore and by restoring the adjacent creeks, the team turns their project into a mediator that promotes the lake as a legal entity, the “green outdoor hub”. A hopefully equal partner in the overall regional public transport network project. Further on, the team offers means of repairing a monofunctional big box urbanism area, thanks to the insightful proximity of ground uses and new residential blocks, hooked on the train station, the lake Möckeln and the rest of the city (fig.2).
3 — Hjertelia (NO), winner — Building the Ecotone > See more P.181 4 — Carouge (CH), runner-up — Cultivating Synergies > See more P.178
5 — Carouge (CH), winner — Gold Line > See more P.177
164 The Building the Ecotone project in Hjertelia envisions a quite engaging profile of the future inhabitants, hoping to shift away from the consumer-client profile. To do so, the project involves programs of co-production, living and working, including organic farming. The residential building typology starts with the construction of the service towers of the future residential buildings to support the agriculture collective. In this case, the agriculture fields and activities get an equal role in the production of a residential neighbourhood (fig.3).
Translating the Transformative Power of Territorial Geographic Entities
The second genre of mediation involves the capacity of the Europan 16 project to identify, to listen to, and finally to translate the transformative powers of territorial geographic entities. Suffice to say that the constitution of the new publics depends on such capacity. Many of the winning projects enter into a process of translation of the existing metabolic processes of territorial geographic entities thanks to the use of geographic, topographic, landscape architecture among others, means of inquiry. Yet, rather often, such capacity-building depends on the designation of the project’s study area by the brief, as well as by the territorial delimitation of the local authorities. Is Carouge’s Riparian Forest the sole legitimate non-human actor of the new publics, as it is put forward by the Gold Line project, or are the cliffs and agricultural land legitimate too, according to the Cultivating Synergies project? What about the greater Genevan urban ecosystem, the project’s authors of
the Regenerating Carouge Grounds ask? Design intentions that go beyond binaries such as city and countryside, that break dichotomies of woods and agriculture fields and that understand the potentialities of in-between conditions, are common in all the projects mentioned above. The Cultivating Synergies project translates such intentions into strategies involving an urban spine, a green net and the flow space of the river Arve (fig.4). The Riparian Forest is the in-between condition according to the Gold Line (fig.5), a common ground strategy to assemble the isolated parts of Fontennette, to engender new ecologies between humans and non-humans for the constitution of the new publics. According to the Regenerating Carouge Grounds project (fig.6), grasslands and wetlands inform the micro-topographies and transform the soil of the project site, thus suggesting Caring for territorial geographic new relationships between social and ecological urban landscapes. entities endeavours a switch Broadening the spectrum of modalities by listening, apprecifrom an anthropocentric to ating and translating territorial geographic entities opens up the project to the complexity of the a biocentric approach territorial situated knowledge. the project Niort, Port Terrestre uses such modalities to radically inverse land-use planning practices. It reshuffles the game rules from “anthropocentrism to biocentrism” by putting geography in the centre of the territory, giving priority to landscapes and users (fig.7). The design modalities become alive. They get their power thanks to the existing dynamics. According to the authors of the Mutual Valleys project in Niort “…a switch is then necessary to consider these changes in all their complexities leaning on local geographical and factorial specificities as the means of a spontaneous resilience”11 (fig.8). In other words, to establish
capacity-building in anticipating and interacting with the unforeseeable conditions caused by natural phenomena. The Mutual Valleys project deploys a regenerating landscape framework to engender new relations between the hydrological, urban and landscape aspects of the Niort agglomeration. The project’s strategies are translated into precise actions that are precious for the project’s actors to make the “switch” possible.
Caring for Territorial Geographic Entities
Caring asks for a shift from a growth model to one of repair. Caring for territorial geographic entities endeavours a switch from an anthropocentric to a biocentric approach. Instigating new publics where the territorial geographic entities have an equal role with humans is one of the two mediating capacities that the territorial project may have. Translating their transformative power into the project’s modalities is the second. Yet, both challenge the urban modus operandi of the local authorities, as well as the disciplinary modalities of professions such as architecture and planning. At the same time, a territorial geographic repair approach offers the urban actors ways to overcome the risk of being overwhelmed by the challenges vis-à-vis the “exhausted Earth”. It encourages the urban actors trapped in nested scales to collaborate for such cause. We can see that the winning projects serve as mediators for the acculturation of the urban actors towards the new paradigm of repair. For example, the project Niort, Port Terrestre offers a glossary that is both analytic and design-oriented. It brings together issues of democratic urban practices, as well as modalities of turning territorial geographic entities into legal ones. The Cultivating Synergies project in Carouge provides the inhabitants with a toolbox to “boost the collective intelligence”, a process of acculturation of a participatory method based on landscape challenges. All winning projects discussed in this article are open-ended. Some provide physical spaces where public debates may take place during the process of implementation. They are equipped with roadmaps for gradual transformation. They offer ways to experiment and to implement prototypes from the new paradigm of a territorial geographic repair approach. They all contribute to the construction of the collective intelligence of the Europan network about politics of repair that may give confidence to the European cities. The Europan platform may be an antidote to any kind of “artificial beach” and inactiveness. Yet the collective endeavour to imagining Europan’s contribution to a territorial repair model paradigm would first need to confront “care-washing” intentions that come with the status-quo of the growth model manifested in neoliberal urban developments across Europe. Secondly, it should allow for relations of solidarity to take place among the Europan cities network. Besides, “caretaking for one place may need action in another place. It becomes the responsibility for all, a kind of indigenous sacred approach”12 (fig.9).
1. Excerpt from the Sun & Sea opera score, written by Lucia Pietroiusti 2. Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, artists: Rugile Barzdz iukaite, Vaiva Grainyte,
Lina Lapelyte 3. Joan Tronto, Caring Architecture, in Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny,
Architekturzentrum Wien, editors (2019) Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, MIT Press, p. 29. 4. Steven Jackson (2014) Rethinking Repair cited by Shannon Mattern, (2021), A City is not a computer: other urban intelligences, pp. 106, 107 5. Mattern 2021, p.112 6. Mattern 2021, p.109 7. From the competition documents of the Mutual Valleys project, Niort. 8. According to Aglaée Degros and a recent conference with the title
Territorial Turn at the Institute of Urbanism, TU Graz, https://hda-graz.at/programm/territorial-turn-en 9. Mattern 2021, p.111 10. From the competition documents of the Mutual Valleys project, Niort 11. From the competition documents of the Mutual Valleys project 12. A free transcription of a comment by Anders Johansson, president of Europan Sverige, during the closing round table about Care, at the Forum of Cities and Juries in San Sebastian, November 2021
9 — The closing round table discussion about Care at the E16 Cities and Juries Forum, San Sebastián, November 2021, ©Socrates Stratis
6 — Carouge (CH), runner-up — Regenerating Carouge Grounds > See more P.179
Back to Life!
ANALYSIS ARTICLE BY NICOLÁS MARTÍNEZ RUEDA (ES) — ARCHITECT, FOUNDER OF THE ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITION FOR STUDENTS DOCEXDOCE WWW.DOCEXDOCE.COM
“Traditionally, the modern attitude towards the existing has been defined by a ʻtabula rasa’ approach, that is, the erasure of past traces as the only way to bring about the new”1. Having overcome this viewpoint, which for so long has marked the architecture and urban design of our cities, contemporary approaches increasingly avoid an empty and artificially produced starting point. A close look at the city, based on inclusivity and care, seeks to correct the damage previously done to our milieu. More attentive to the context in which it is located, conscious of understanding and enhancing not only the building stock itself but also the relationships between the inhabitants it shelters and the uses it favours, this sub-theme Dealing with New Uses invites participants to work on a series of sites with available building stock at the end of their first or second life cycles. A careful and affective approach is promoted to improve our buildings, cities or territories “performances”, avoiding the usual solutions whose main forces are the economically driven. Is it possible to generate strategic uses that enhance new life cycles from a metabolic and inclusive point of view? That might break the circle of building-demolishing-building and provide “future-proof” designs. The sites proposed by Europan 16 for this sub-theme offer a great richness and variety of workspaces. There are locations with very delimited work opportunities such as Brussels-Capital-Region (BE) and Landshut (DE); more complex sites with multiple constructions or urban elements involved, but configured around a unique main focus, such as Istres (FR) and San Donà Venezia (IT); and finally, sites with a multiplicity of opportunity spaces that require a major strategy of urban repair, such as Limoges (FR). Beyond the morphology, multiplicity and nature of the problems raised by the sites, the study of the winning projects and those highlighted by the jury shows a series of viewpoints that, although with transversal elements to all of them, can be organized around three attitudes towards pre-existences.
1 — Landshut (DE), winner — Archive of European Culture > See more P.205
3 — Istres (FR), preselected — Ruche populaire
Inside: New Uses Are Driven by Internal Conditions
The winning projects in Brussels-Capital-Region and Landshut demonstrate great capacities to detect and highlight the site force while clarifying its position within contemporary transitions. Moreover, this task might become especially complex when we introduce the variable of “heritage building”. This is the case of the winning project Archive of European Culture in Landshut around the former prison: a building located near Landshut’s historic town centre and completely empty for several years that, with minimal architectural operations focused on the circulation of users, renews its original “safekeeping” concept to help keep the tangible world from the digital universe in which our culture is recorded. As the project authors describe: “Once built to protect those outside from those contained within, [the building] will now protect what is kept inside from possible threats outside” (fig.1). Meanwhile, the winning project entitled Architecture Centre for Regenerative Materials in Brussels-Capital-Region answers the question of how to find a new program that makes the best of the pre-existing. While other projects on this site introduce strong interventions and demolition works in order to bring light to the interior floors, the Architecture Centre for Regenerative Materials accepts its given reality and proposes to transform the extensive basement archive of the current CIVA (which will move out in 2024, leaving the building vacant) into a mycelium productionlaboratory space. A natural-based construction material that will
be the object of research and development in the public spaces of the building. A very interesting approach is to take advantage of this mycelium production to recondition the building hosting the production; besides, according to the authors, this could be replicated on a larger scale (fig.2). The runner-up project, Grow 4 Brussels, also highlights the same recognition of the existing, introducing interventions on the building that are as minimal as possible, while starting production in the vast underground space using hydroponic farms. The first two proposals establish a very different relationship with their context: while Archive for European Culture collects information to protect on the inside, the Architecture Centre for Regenerative Materials produces Generate strategic uses that thanks to the inside in order to influence the outside world by enhance new life cycles from contributing to the process of “substitute industrial materials a metabolic and inclusive by, as much as possible, natural materials” in the building industry according to the project authors. point of view These two strategies contrast in a complementary way with the self-sufficient ambition of the preselected project entitled Ruche populaire in Istres, which wonders whether the pre-existing can be mined for its own resources. A quest to give a new life to spaces, using the pre-existing as the main building material. A transformation of the waste of the past into resources for the future. Favouring a slow-path transformation, enabling the very users of the space to execute it enhances the sense of belonging to the community that will inhabit it, and therefore, improves its protection and resilience in the future (fig.3).
4 — Landshut (DE), special mention — Medieval Experimentarium > See more P.206
5 — Istres (FR), runner-up — Devising the Milieu > See more P.201
Interface: New Uses Are Supported by a New Interface for the Pre-Existing
The projects entitled Medieval Experimentarium —special mention— and Devising the Milieu —runner-up—, from Landshut and Istres respectively, allow us to exemplify another type of attitude: understanding what happens if efforts are focused on operating on the boundaries of their new uses and their most direct surroundings, rather than simply in their inner spaces. These projects explore devices that articulate new uses in the pre-existing while manifesting it to the outside, almost as a claim and an invitation to take part in the building’s new life. The new light structure designed as a “grand hall” according to the team of Medieval Experimentarium works mainly as a social cloister. In addition, its public vertical circulation enhances the position of the space in the city landscape and articulates the new uses proposed in the interior with little modification of the inherited architecture. An operation whose reversibility adds value in the face of other possible future uses of the building (fig.4). In Istres, the interface becomes more complex and larger with the runner-up project Devising the Milieu. In this city, we find the Educational & Cultural Centre (ECC) “Les Heures Claires”. Built in the 1970s under ideas of sharing, collective reflection and embracing multi-disciplinary collaboration2, the Centre nowadays faces an opposing reality when the secondary school is about to leave the facilities. Some other strong equipment is coming, but the city still needs a new use for the former school. This operation should also revalorize the common spaces: a modular structure recognizes the existing archetype of the pre-existing and works with two main strategies. First, it connects the different equipment of the ECC together, but also to their environment by favouring openness to the lagoon of the Étang de Berre and the sea. Secondly, this “interface” attitude decreases its operational scale through a diversity of acupuncture strategies that improve not only the immediate surroundings of the facilities, but also their interconnections (fig.5).
Exterior: New Uses Are Driven by Outer Conditions
When the number of sites open for intervention in one city are multiple, the ways of operating need become more complex, but still categorical at the same time, within an empathetic strategy properly articulated in a medium-term timeframe. In the city of Limoges, the special mention project Vivifica facilitates the reading of this multiplicity of necessary operations over a very unique context where disappearing industrial activities coexist, still with many traces remaining, close to both a dense city centre by the North side and the city’s countryside and the Vienne River by the South. Despite a degrading milieu, there is a rich building ecosystem to be revealed (fig.6). Demolition is used as selectively as possible, trying to favour the conversion of outdated infrastructures into architecture, while caring with attention and recognition all the actors involved. A new life cycle must be set in motion here and Vivifica, as explained by the authors, proposes two attitudes to resolve a constellation of problematics: frugality and humility. Timing is also controlled properly through operations like connecting, renaturing, reanimating and reopening: “the proposal also suggests a credible phasing over some 15 years”3 . Tackling the problem of losing inhabitants, the project introduces housing typologies that favour an active neighbourhood life, criticizing the ones that privatize spaces. It also tackles the problem of the decreasing presence of nature in the public domain. Meanwhile, in San Donà Venezia, action is taken by the opportunity left at the “ATVO building’ bus station by changing its location to a new hub under construction. Instead of operating in a broad environment with micro-interventions that are very measured in time as exemplified by Vivifica in Limoges, the winning project in San Donà Agroecological Condenser proposes a well-developed
environmental analysis and promotes an urban agroecological approach as the driving force4: it allows the city to build an urban structure consistent with the new strategic objectives aimed at limiting the impact of cities on climate change. The pre-existing ATVO building is the starting point of the whole renovation process within a “productive” terraced greenhouse. (fig.7 & 7bis) Will renaturalization be a stronger driving force to boost these new uses that are so much in demand in San Donà?
Transformative Culture
Thanks to the work of architects, landscape architects and urban planners, among others, we are witnessing a variety of metabolic and integrative attitudes to bring buildings and territories back to life with their users. There seems to be a growing collective awareness that approaches the process of revival with a certain optimism, that cares for the memory of the place and respects the identity of the buildings without rejecting contemporaneity. Unfortunately, some of these attitudes may be with us due to a matter of necessity, as they rely exclusively on a low-level structure of resources. However, time will bring wisdom and these processes can be internalized in the different actors involved, whether they are public owners, private developers or simple users; allowing offering built environments in which to intensify naturalization processes for a post-car world scenario or simply experimenting within temporary uses, without wasting resources.
1. Colmenares, S. (2019). From “tabula rasa” towards “terrain vague”.
Emptiness as inception. Rita, (11) 66-74 2. From the competition document of Istres site, “Les Heures Claires, from one utopia to another” 3. From the French jury report on the Limoges site, p. 32 (available on europan-europe.eu) 4. From the Italian jury report on the San Donà Venezia site, p.8 (available on europan-europe.eu) 6 — Limoges (FR), special mention — Vivifica > See more P.211
7 — San Donà Venezia (IT), winner — Agroecological Condenser > See more P.213
Caring for Our Milieus: Which “Shifts” to Take Now?
ANALYSIS ARTICLE BY DIMITRI SZUTER (FR) — ARCHITECT, RESEARCHER, DANCER AND PERFORMER CO-FOUNDER OF P.E.R.F.O.R.M! WWW.PERFORM-THE-CITY.ORG
The theme of Living Cities gives a new creative impetus, shifts the issues and makes the traditional or inherited automatisms of the making of the city obsolete: it is no longer possible to continue “business as usual”. This new prism implies a repositioning, an essential readjustment of the issues, of the theoretical and action frameworks of the making of the city in order for us to align as much as possible with the climatic challenges of our century. The specificity of Caring, to quote Chris Younès, leads “to the idea of the revival of reflection, thought and imagination around what makes our human settlements”. This is an urgent, yet exciting, challenge of re-invention, from which the E16 rewarded teams have developed bold proposals. The projects presented hereafter make visible —in a concrete way— not only the problematic issues embodied in varied urban and territorial situations, but also new creative ways of dealing with them: a transformative laboratory
1 — Aalst (BE), preselected — Ever-Changing-Aalst
for shifting our ways of thinking and acting today, initiating the ecological, political, economic and social shifts that are necessary for a changeover towards the post-Anthropocene. This politicised attention based on Caring therefore calls for a rethinking of all our situations: whether they are around declining industrial districts in very urban contexts, as in Aalst (BE) or Ettlingen (DE); around former colonies or isolated industrial factories in more or less urbanised territories, as in EsperragueraColonia Sedó (ES) or Auneuil (FR); or in the heart of remote and vulnerable rural areas, as in Beizama (ES). Obviously, the diversity of these situations calls for a diversity of responses to prepare and equip the reflection on Caring in a way that is theoretical and conceptual, but also directed to processes, strategies and operations. In order to participate in the creation of this new common culture, we propose to analyse several projects in terms of three shifts that have emerged in this first edition of the Living Cities, outlining three project attitudes to the situations.
Caring for the Existing in All its Forms, Encouraging the Potentials Starting Today
Stagnation is no longer an option. We can no longer wait for economic forces and top-down decision-making powers to act and reclaim our environments. Every “already-there” carries an immediate potential that we can rapidly reveal and activate through inventive strategies. The teams are here trying to develop “soft power toolkits” and advocate bottom-up actions to initiate here and now with little or no resources. The performativity of the action allows the unpredictable to occur during the design process to better welcome the potentials that emerge, transforming uncertainty into strength. These projects are much more flexible: they are less specific in their forms than in their processes and their “field” methodology; their exploring new ways of doing things together counts more than the operational control of the objectives. This is the idea behind the serendipity approach (Corboz), in which each accident along the way, each resistance or constraint “weighing” on the actual design are considered positively as “events that generate possibilities”. These are particularly inclusive, resilient and living approaches, that needs further encouragement. The project Ever-Changing-Aalst in Aalst aims to create the conditions for the emergence of new potentials from everything that pre-exists on the industrial site in terms of spaces, volumes and materials. Besides activating light devices acting as activators of ephemeral uses, it also participates in the creation of new social rituals and generates first progressive activities of reuse and recycling of the existing (fig.1). The team seeks to awaken with few means a collective awareness of the pre-existing potentials of the environment as a first act of re-appropriation. This resilient and agile progressive approach ensures that the unpredictable is given a place in the long-term as a power of collective invention thanks to the development of the site at multiple speeds and with multiple characteristics: mutation keeps on and a balance arises between the so-called “permanent” transformations and the spaces that extend “changing” functions for an indefinite period. In another vein, the project Inter-Tenement in Auneuil proposes an acupunctural strategy to densify the existing plots (fig.2) drawing up a very precise taxonomy of the existing built forms from which potential adaptation forms can emerge. This strategic proposal is in line with the goal of “zero net artificialisation” and is anchored in
3 — Beizama (ES), special mention — Being Beizama > See more P.229 a strong desire to repair the existing fabric in order to counteract the issues of urban sprawl. The in-depth analysis of the existing area and its potential for development is therefore armed with an inventive toolbox that allows the territory to be strengthened gradually —but starting today— through micro-interventions on a local scale. The strength of the project lies of course in its inventiveness, in its complementarity with other territorial approaches, but also in the possibility to be implemented in the short-term. The power of the strategy also lies The specificity of Caring in the fact that it can be used in more than one situation, on other is an urgent, yet exciting, territories. What is perhaps missing, however, is a collective lever to challenge of re-invention convince and engage the community in the acupunctural process: the operational individuality must be accompanied by a new collective narrative to operate on an intermunicipal scale. This is precisely the idea of the project Being Beizama in Beizama (fig.3). The project team indeed set out to identify not only the local inhabitants, but also the new populations that might be likely to come and settle in these rural mountainous areas after the health crisis. The urban exodus will deteriorate the rural ecosystems, which are not adapted to the arrival of new populations. The creation of a new inclusive collective narrative and of action tools to embody it here and now must accompany these changes in order to help communities to collectively reinvent themselves from what already exists: care should be taken to invent new ways of living together in terms of housing, of cooperative exchanges and circular economies, and of relationships to the territory and its resources, for a gradual shit of the environment that takes care of all the people who (will) live there, but also of all the resources that compose it. The narrative and the collective imagination then become “a staging ground for action” (Appaduraï).
Inverting the Focus and the Order of Priorities, (Re-)Ecologizing in Priority and Thoroughly
Building is no longer a matter of course. Priority care must be taken to regenerate the landscapes and ecosystems damaged by human activity. It is a question of analysing and then repairing what was once potential in terms of ecologies (soils, flows, ecosystems, synergistic relationships of the living, etc.) to use as living and structuring matrices for the project. This thorough (re-)ecologizing of the environments constitutes, for the following projects, the first act of transformation, or rather, of repair. The idea of development, which is inherent in all urban and territorial projects, is implemented in a second phase, based on this first act, which defines its measure (Gaudin). The focus is now on the natural elements and infrastructures, the open spaces, and the exchanges and flows (human and non-human) which are orchestrated there. The point here is first about valuing the common good, including in particular the powers of nature, and the federating human activities over the individual capitalist interest. The project Deconfining the Colony in Esparreguera-Colonia Sedó first seeks to repair the wounds caused by the creation of the colony on its environment, in particular by the fracture that it created between the mountain and the river. The first action is not to build, but rather to demolish the old walls of the colony in order to re-create fertile exchanges of flows and species across the site and, through this, allow its regeneration (fig.4). The care given to the renaturation of the soil and open spaces in and around the former colony is then progressively accompanied by the rehabilitation of the existing buildings; new constructions appear in a third time to consolidate the buildings, densifying the site at strategic points for its development, while taking care not to alter the regenerated natural ecosystems. Biodiversity is therefore considered to be the main legacy to restore. Further in this inversion of priorities, the project A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall in Aalst takes to heart the revaluation of the Dender River, placing it at the origin and at the centre of an urban re-structuring project that goes far beyond the scale of the study site. In the words of the team, the River becomes “an architectural
artefact, a medium for the coordination of many sites, of many programs and events”. For them, “conceiving the river as an architectural element, allows to understand that Urbanism and Nature will now be built as simultaneous elements of the same ecological development strategy”. It thus becomes the living artery that impulses progressive transformations on both sides of the banks (fig.5). The team deploys a large-scale soil renaturation plan inside and over the entire site, together with a strategy of smart irrigation networks: a new motherboard that allows micro-ecosystems to emerge, generating original atmothe shifts must be deeply spheres and programmes. A thorough redesign of the site’s soil and open spaces, providing innovation rooted at the heart of the in urban ecologies and varied uses. The project École des arts de la transformation process terre in Auneuil takes this idea of thorough ecologizing even further. Seeking to reconnect with the site’s and the region’s productive memory, the team is indeed betting on the reactivation of training linked to the sector of biosourced materials —earth. The entire rural revival project is based on the geology of the area and the natural materials present in the soil (clays, sands, gaizes): the team proposes to create a School of Earthen Arts (fig.6) that will update know-how, generate virtuous channels of materials and circular economies, and make it possible to revive the economy and to gradually rehabilitate the damaged buildings of the former Boulenger factory, the nerve centre of the project. In other words: how to generate a new virtuous territorial metabolism that is economically viable and socially inclusive, and based on what makes up the intrinsic strength of the environment?
Caring for the Inter-Relations, an Ecology of Interactions
Acting in isolation is no longer conceivable. The first transformation act here lies in creating reconnections. It is a question of reconnecting, of making fragmented entities and objects, isolated systems or independent flows fit together in order to (re-)form complex synergistic ecosystems. These projects indeed consider environments far beyond the proposed study site, while encompassing it, aiming at a so-called territorial ecology. This multi-scalar approach seeks to repair pre-existing weak or broken links, to create new
4 — Esparreguera-Colonia Sedó (ES), winner — Deconfining the Colony > See more P.233
6 — Auneuil (FR), winner — École des arts de la terre > See more P.223
and performative links. Its genius lies in the care given to the powers of interaction that it creates or restores. Strengthening these links and focusing on the invisible threads that generate our territories means bringing environments out of their vulnerabilities and arming them to cope with future hazards. This attitude is particularly visible in the project The Ways of Sedó in Esparreguera-Colonia Sedó. The project indeed makes a thorough, complex analysis of the territory and develops a proposal that includes all the agents operating there (fig.7). The team considers the old settlement as a support that disrupts the connection between the two neighbouring towns of Olesa and Esparreguera. It therefore wants to transform the colony into a new hybrid ecosystem, catalysing a wide variety of programmes, whose aim would be to recreate the connections between these different fragmented contexts: a new dynamic and thriving environment, crossed by various interconnected playful and productive itineraries and cycles. A landscape of performative interactions with multiple reconnections: a place of territorial convergences. The idea of convergence also lies at the heart of the project Multilayer City in Ettlingen. Here, the team deploys a network of three interconnected thematic cycles to regenerate the former ELBA industrial site, creating a productive ecosystem that is connected internally and linked externally to the territory. The virtuous cycles converge synergistically in several interactive joints at the heart of the site as places of pulsation, hotbeds of inclusive and metabolic vitality, cradles of social exchange, of flows of materials, of production and redistribution, and of productive ecologies (fig.8). In short, the project seeks to establish a new urban community that is resilient and adapted to future changes, with 50% of the surface area dedicated to open spaces, and therefore to interactions. Also at the heart of the reflection, the spaces of local and territorial interactions are embodied in a different spatial figure in
7 — Esparreguera-Colonia Sedó (ES), runner-up — The Ways of Sedó > See more P.234
8 — Ettlingen (DE), winner — Multilayer City > See more P.240
9 — Beizama (ES), runner-up — Rhizoma > See more P.228
the project Rhizoma in Beizama. Here, the ground floors of the new housing (fig. 9), extending into the public community space of Beizama, form the new interactive platforms between the inhabitants and the territory: they become meeting places for new networks of circular economies and social-economic exchanges, places of multiple contacts between the various agents that inhabit and create the territory. A new way of considering the relationship between man and his environment, expressed in an urban-architectural form that participates in the creation of a new model that can be adapted to other rural situations in the Basque Country, and even in other regions.
